Men's & women's clothing prices decline in Dec CPI
24 Jan '07
2 min read
Consumer prices accelerated for the fourth consecutive month in December.
Consumers paid 1.6% more for the goods and services in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket in December 2006 than they did a year earlier. It was a slightly faster pace than the 12-month change of 1.4% in November.
Still, December's increase was below the average gain of 2.0% in the all-items CPI for 2006 as a whole, and well below the much hotter pace in the first eight months of 2006.
On a monthly basis, consumer prices edged up 0.2% between November and December last year, the same increase as in the previous month. The monthly index, excluding energy, slipped 0.1% in December after a 0.2% increase the month before.
The core Consumer Price Index, used by the Bank of Canada to monitor the inflation-control target, rose by 2.0% between December 2005 and December 2006, compared with 2.2% the previous month. The monthly core CPI slipped 0.2% in December, following a 0.3% increase in November.
Elsewhere, the growth in the all-items CPI was slowed by continually falling prices for men's and women's clothing.
Discounts associated with fall sales, combined with holiday sales, reduced the price of women's clothing by 5.4%. It was the biggest decline ever for the month of December, and the largest decrease in women's clothing since a 5.8% plunge in April 2006.
It was the same case with prices for men's clothing, which fell 4.1%, the biggest decline since a 5.1% drop in June 2003.
Consumer Price Index and major components: Clothing and Footwear (unadjusted)
Relative importance: 5.37
December 2006: 98.4
November 2006: 102.0
December 2005: 100.4
November to December 2006: -3.5
December 2005 to December 2006: -2.0
20240830145952.gif)
.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "UBM China (Shanghai)")
-Ltd..jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Thermore (Far East) Ltd.")
