The Inflation That Remained: Sources and Retention of Consumer-Price Increases in Saint Lucia, 2019–2025

Full abstract

Abstract

Inflation can fall while the official consumer-price level remains high. This study measures that distinction for Saint Lucia using the Central Statistical Office’s April 2026 revised monthly consumer price index (CPI) tables for January 2019 through December 2025, with 2018 retained as presample for 2019 12-month and annual-average calculations. The all-items index rose 19.2% between December 2019 and December 2025, although annual-average inflation declined from 9.7% in 2022 to −0.8% in 2024 and 0.7% in 2025. Under the displayed February 2016 weights, the largest synthetic fixed-weight attributions were housing and utilities (8.93 percentage points), food (5.14), and transport (2.62). Housing and food together represented 68.4% of summed positive synthetic attribution. Eleven of 12 divisions, representing 95.7% of displayed February 2016 weight, remained above their December 2019 levels at the end of 2025. Yet only three divisions, representing 44.2% of displayed weight, recorded positive 12-month changes in December 2025. Near-zero headline movement between December 2023 and December 2025 concealed large, offsetting division changes. Because displayed divisions and weights do not exactly reconstruct published all-items CPI, the paper reports the official-minus-synthetic aggregation discrepancy and interprets the attribution as descriptive, not causal. The evidence answers an aggregate CPI question without a new survey, but cannot identify household-specific burdens, affordability, margins, or causal shocks.