Sri Lanka’s headline inflation edged up to 5.5 percent in May 2026 from 5.4 percent in April, the Department of Census and Statistics said Thursday — a 27-month high not seen since February 2024.
The Colombo Consumer Price Index (CCPI) measures year-on-year change in the official basket. The May reading keeps inflation inside the Central Bank’s 3–7 percent target band but is approaching the upper bound, and analysts say the Central Bank had expected to reach its 5 percent medium-term target only later in the year, EconomyNext reported.
The two sub-indices moved in opposite directions. Food inflation declined sharply to 0.9 percent in May from 2.8 percent in April, the statistics office said. Non-food inflation rose to 7.8 percent from 6.8 percent, suggesting that the transport and energy cost pass-through from the roughly 40 percent fuel price hike following Middle East supply disruption continues to feed through to services and other non-food categories.
The CCPI also rose 0.9 percent on the month, lifting the index 1.8 points to 203.4 from 201.6, the statistics office said — an increase of Rs.1,625.48 in the cost of the market basket. Non-food items contributed 0.62 percent and food items 0.26 percent to the month-on-month move, with vegetables and sea fish leading on the food side and transport plus housing, water, electricity and gas leading on the non-food side.
The May print follows the Central Bank’s policy rate hike on May 26, when the Monetary Policy Board lifted the Overnight Policy Rate by 100 basis points to curb demand-driven inflation. The headline rate remains well below the double-digit readings recorded during the 2022 currency crisis.
