Rio, March 25, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - Retail inflation, as measured by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation's (FGV) Weekly Consumer Price Index (IPC-S), based on prices observed over the 30 days between February 19 and March 18, 2003, registered a 1.06% increase, 0.07% less than the IPC-S on March 12. The FGV released this result yesterday (24).

The FGV's coordinator of Economic Analyses, Salomão Quadros, said, however, that the deceleration was less than the 0.13% recorded between March 6 and 12. In his view, the numbers demonstrate the sluggishness with which consumer inflation is diminishing. By the groups that have weight in the index, the greatest increase occurred in Health and Personal Care, in which price inflation grew from 0.63% to 0.79%. Despite this, the Food group, which experienced a 0.05% reduction in price inflation in comparison with the previous survey, reinforces its influence on the composition of the IPC-S, in which it accounts for 47.72% of the variation. In geographic terms, the analysis shows that, in comparison with the week before, the IPC-S diminished in 7 of the 12 capitals surveyed, including São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and advanced in 5 of them. The largest increase occurred in Porto Alegre (1.58%), and the smallest (0.80%), in Curitiba. (DAS)