Sri Lanka’s national rate of inflation was unchanged at 8.1% in September 2026, holding at its highest level in 40 months, the Department of Census and Statistics said on Wednesday as it released the National Consumer Price Index for the month.
The Department’s dashboard states that “NCPI for the month of September 2026 was 224.2 and the year on year inflation has reported as 8.1%”. The index gained 0.1% over the month, from 223.9 points in August.
The National Consumer Price Index measures retail prices across all provinces, rather than the capital alone. It is published roughly three weeks after the reference month.
The headline held still; the mix underneath it rotated
The unchanged figure conceals a reversal in what is driving it. Food inflation rose while non-food inflation fell, and the two moves very nearly cancelled.
| Category | August | September |
|---|---|---|
| Food | 6.6% | 6.9% |
| Non-food | 9.3% | 9.1% |
| All items | 8.1% | 8.1% |
The Department described food as showing “a slight increase” to 6.9% and non-food “a slight decrease” to 9.1%, Hiru News reported in Sinhala at 7.13 p.m. EconomyNext carried the same two figures at 5.58 p.m.
That matters for direction. Non-food has been the larger of the two rates throughout this year’s price run, and it has now turned down for the first time in the sequence this desk has tracked. Food, which had already jumped 1.6 points between June and July and a further 1.7 points into August, is still rising — but only by 0.3 points, its smallest monthly gain in four months.
A reader looking only at the headline would see a stall. The components show a handover in progress, with the faster-moving category cooling and the slower one still warming.
The release closes a gap this desk recorded in August
Reporting August’s NCPI a month ago, this desk noted that neither the Department’s release nor the reporting on it gave the August non-food rate as a percentage — only its contribution of 5.14 percentage points to the 8.1% total. Food’s contribution was derived here as the residual 2.96 points, implying food carried roughly 44% of the basket.
September’s filing supplies the missing figure: August non-food was 9.3%. Solving the two published August rates against the published headline gives a food weight of 44.4%, with contributions of 2.93 and 5.17 percentage points.
Those are the archive’s derived numbers to within three hundredths of a point. The estimate holds, and the weight is now confirmed from the Department’s own published rates rather than inferred.
Still above the Central Bank’s band
At 8.1% the reading remains well above the Central Bank’s 5% target and above the 7% upper limit of its band, which has now been breached on both national and Colombo gauges for several months. The Bank last held its key policy rate at 8.75%, and the Governor has defended the 5% target against calls for a lower one.
The national index also stays above the urban one for a second month. September’s Colombo Consumer Price Index was unchanged at 8.0%, a 37-month high on that measure, against the national 8.1% — continuing the crossover that first appeared in August.
Not reported
EconomyNext dates the last higher national reading to June 2023; counted inclusively, that span is 40 months. No filing gives a core inflation rate for the NCPI, a provincial breakdown, or the contribution of each category to September’s total in percentage points. None explains why non-food turned down.
Ada Derana also reported the release, under the headline that overall inflation remains unchanged at 8.1%. It is not cited as a source here because its CloudFront block on this host is in its thirty-second day and no publish date could be extracted to verify freshness.