In February, annual inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) remained unchanged at 6.1 percent, marginally outside the upper end of the Bank of Botswana’s medium-term objective range of 3 – 6 percent. This was due to offsetting changes in inflation across the various categories of goods and services. Inflation fell in several commodity groups, including food (from 3.6 percent to 3.4 percent), alcohol and tobacco (from 3.8 percent to 3.1 percent) education (from 6.0 percent to 5.8 percent) and restaurants and hotels (from 8.4 percent to 7.9 percent). However, this was countered by increases for clothing and footwear (from 7.5 percent to 8.0 percent), housing, water and electricity (from 4.4 to 4.6 percent), furnishing, household equipment and maintenance (from 10.5 percent to 11 percent), health (from 1.3 percent to 1.6 percent), transport (from 12.2 percent to 12.4 percent), recreation and culture (from 5.8 percent to 6.4 percent) and miscellaneous goods and services (from 5.2 percent to 5.3 percent).

 The trimmed mean core inflation rate also remained unchanged at 6.7 percent; (the figure for January was revised from 6.8 percent). Excluding administered prices, inflation fell marginally, by 0.1 percentage points, from 5.9 percent to 5.8 percent.