15% food price increase in a single month

Advocata’s Bath Curry Indicator (BCI), which tracks the monthly changes in the retail price of food, recorded an increase of 15 percent from November 2021 to 
December 2021.

 
Much of this increase is driven by the rising prices of vegetables. 100g of green chillies at Rs.18 increased to Rs.71. This is a 287 percent increase in just one month. Similarly, the prices of brinjals have increased by 51 percent, red onions by 40 percent and beans and tomatoes by 10 percent. 

Overall, since 2019, the prices have almost doubled and compared to December 2020, the prices have increased by 37 percent. This means that an average family of four, who spent Rs.1165 weekly on the BCI basket of food items in December 2020, now has to pay Rs.1593 for the same basket of goods just one 
year later. 

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 ‘buth’ curry meal,.  The prices are collected from the ‘Weekly Indicators’ that the Central Bank publishes.