Highest food prices recorded in November since 2019: Advocata

Advocata’s Bath Curry Indicator (BCI), which tracks monthly price changes in a basket of commonly consumed food items recorded the highest retail prices in November since 2019. 

Since 2019, prices have increased by 44 percent. This means that an average family, which spent Rs. 960 weekly on the BCI basket of food items in November 2019, now has to pay Rs. 1,390 for the same basket of goods just two years later. 

Retail prices year-on-year have shown an increase of 35 percent. However, the food items that have increased the most in the past month alone are tomatoes (206 percent), beans (33 percent) and green chillies (23 percent). 

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.