Consumer price index falls on P.E.I.

The COVID-19 pandemic turned the arrow on price increases on P.E.I. in 2020, with the provincial economy showing a small amount of deflation.

While inflation was subdued across Canada last year, P.E.I. was the only province to record deflation from December 2019 to December 2020, with the consumer price index down 0.14 per cent from December to December. Nationally, the CPI rose 0.73 per cent.

In 2019, P.E.I. saw one of the larger increases in CPI in the country.

Price changes did vary quite widely depending on what you were buying.

Food prices continued to rise above the average rate, and in fact were up about the same amount they were in 2019, a little more than three per cent.

To balance out that increase, prices for shelter, household operations, clothing and transportation fell.

Alcohol and cannabis, the only sector that saw deflation in 2019, was up 0.7 per cent in 2020.

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