Grocery prices surged 10.6% in February even as inflation cooled overall: StatCan

The annual rate of inflation cooled to 5.2 per cent in February, Statistics Canada says, though Canadians continued to feel the pain of surging costs at grocery stores.

The price of food purchased from the grocery store was up 10.6 per cent year-over-year last month, the agency said in its latest Consumer Price Index report released Tuesday.

The overall annual inflation rate was 5.9 per cent in January.

February’s CPI drop marks the largest deceleration in headline CPI since April 2020, StatCan said.

The inflation report comes ahead of the federal budget on March 28.

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Canadian banks are stable, but ‘something is going to break’ in economy: experts

The Bank of Canada is working to bring the annual inflation rate back to its target of two per cent.

The central bank left its key interest target unchanged at 4.5 per cent earlier this month, the first time it did not raise the rate since it began increasing it last year.

— with files from The Canadian Press