Originally appeared in the Daily FT and Daily Mirror
Advocata’s Bath Curry Indicator (BCI) which tracks the monthly changes in the price of food recorded a jump of 0.70% for the month of July 2021.
The month of July experienced an increase in prices compared to the month of June, according to the basket of food tracked by the BCI.
The 3 items that contributed most to this increase were:
For the month of July 2021, the prices of pumpkin showed the largest increase of 66.4%.
Likewise, the prices of Samba rice, Beans, Dhal and fish (balaya) also experienced minor increases in prices as well.
In comparison to the month of July 2020, the BCI has increased by 45% for 2021, which translates that an average family of 4 that spent Rs. 899.85 on this basket of goods for a week in July 2020 would pay Rs. 1308.10 for the same amount of goods in a week in July 2021.
The BCI tracks the weekly retail prices in the Colombo market of the most commonly consumed food ingredients that might be used in a typical Bath curry meal. The prices are collected from the “Weekly Indicators” that the Central Bank publishes.
The BCI Indicator can be accessed at www.bci.advocata.org.