Today, the Department of Statistics released the May 2020 Consumer Price Index report (attached).

The report documents that in May 2020 consumers paid 0.4 per cent more than they did for the CPI basket of goods and services in May 2019. Between April 2020 and May 2020 the average cost of all goods and services decreased 0.2 percentage points. It should be noted that some price data used to produce the CPI index was not collected in May 2020 due to some unavailable goods and services, non-response from open stores and the temporary store closures caused by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 

As a result of COVID-19, in-person field collection was suspended and, where possible, prices were collected via alternative methods such as online and email. The Rent and Transport & Foreign Travel sectors were two of the nine sectors in May 2020 that had missing prices which were imputed. 

Table 2 of the report provides May 2020, April 2020 and May 2019 outlets and price collection methods metadata for comparison. All missing prices were imputed by targeted mean imputation and the carry forward method. 

The Food sector was the largest contributor to the twelve-month increase in the CPI. Notable increases in this sector were chocolates & candies (+25.5 per cent), eggs (+25.1 per cent) and frozen broccoli spears (+22.7 per cent) for the year.  As a result, the annual rate of price increase for this sector climbed 3.8 per cent. In addition, the Health & Personal Care sector (+3.2 per cent) and the Education, Recreation, Entertainment & Reading sector (+0.4 per cent) impacted the rise in the annual rate of inflation.

Between April 2020 and May 2020 The Food sector rose 0.7 per cent in May. Price changes occurred for fresh and frozen boneless pork lion (+10.8 per cent), condensed milk (+7.5 per cent) and fresh and frozen leg of lamb (+7.0 per cent).

The May 2020 Consumer Price Index is available online at www.gov.bm/bermuda-business-statistics.