Highest food prices recorded in November

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

Since 2019, prices have increased by 44%. This means that an average family, who 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%. However, the food items that have increased the most in the past month alone are tomatoes (206%), beans (33%) and green chilli (23%).

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 Buth curry meal. The prices are collected from the Weekly Indicators that the Central Bank publishes.