Canada’s annual \u2060inflation rate rose to 2.4% in March, with prices jumping 0.9% on the month, as higher crude oil costs drove up gasoline prices, data showed today.<\/p>\n
The headline annual inflation rate was last at this level in December. The monthly inflation spike was the highest in 14 months, Statistics Canada said.<\/p>\n
The Iran war, which started at the end of February, has choked crude oil shipments from the Strait of Hormuz, wiping off almost a fifth of global oil supply. This has led to a spike in gasoline prices at the pump and strained consumer budgets.<\/p>\n
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a slightly higher consumer price index with \u200cthe annual inflation estimate at 2.6% from \u20601.8% in the prior month, and monthly inflation at 1.1%, up from 0.5% in February.<\/p>\n
Canada’s inflation has been benign for well over a year and has stayed around the mid-point of the Bank of Canada’s target range of 1-3%.<\/p>\n
Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said last week that the central bank was not concerned about a short-term spike in inflation expectations.<\/p>\n
The war pushed gasoline prices up by 5.9% on \u200ca yearly basis and drove a 21.2% surge on a monthly basis in March.<\/p>\n
The year-over-year figure was partly muted due to higher gasoline prices during the same period last \u2060year due to a carbon levy which was dropped in April 2025.<\/p>\n
The higher gasoline prices increased the cost \u200cof transportation, which is the second biggest contributor to the CPI basket, by 3.7% in March \u2060from a year \u200cago.<\/p>\n
Food prices were another major contributor to the increase in headline annual inflation, data from the statistics agency said.<\/p>\n
Prices for food purchased from stores rose 4.4% annually in March, after increasing 4.1% in February. Prices for fresh vegetables increased 7.8%, the largest increase since August 2023, StatsCan said.<\/p>\n
Since headline \u2060inflation could be volatile, the Bank of Canada and economists also monitor core inflation metrics to gauge the underlying trend of inflation.<\/p>\n
Its closely \u2060tracked measure, the CPI-median, the centre mostcomponent of the CPI basket, stayed unchanged from the prior month at 2.3%, while CPI-trim, which excludes the most extreme price changes, edged down to 2.2% in March.<\/p>\n
Money markets do not expect any change in interest rates by the Bank of Canada this \u200cmonth and are pricing in a 25 basis point hike in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada’s annual \u2060inflation rate rose to 2.4% in March, with prices jumping 0.9% on the month, as higher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-409249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}