Inflation continues to ease in post-float Egypt: Annual urban inflation cooled to 32.5% in April, down from 33.3% in March on the back of slower food price increases as traders continued to price in a lower exchange rate than in the now-defunct parallel market, according to figures from state statistics agency Capmas.

You can thank food and beverage prices: Food and beverage prices — the largest component of the basket of goods and services used to calculate headline inflation — continued to rise but at a rate of 40.5% y-o-y — a 4.5 percentage point drop from the previous month.

Food and beverage prices fell on a monthly basis, with prices dipping 0.9% in April, from the month before, marking the first month of deflation since August 2021.

But for all items, monthly inflation inched up slightly, nudging up 0.1 percentage point to 1.1% after reaching a six-month low of 1.0% in March.

Core inflation also declined: Annual core inflation — which excludes volatile items such as food and fuel — slowed to 31.8%, down from 33.7% in March, according to data from the Central Bank of Egypt. Monthly core inflation, meanwhile, fell to 0.3%, down from 1.4% in March.

This month’s inflation data is in line with analyst expectations: A Reuters poll of 17 analysts saw headline inflation declining to 32.8%, while 10 out of 13 analysts polled by CNBC Arabia forecasted inflation slowing between 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points.

It looks like the state’s war on commodity prices helped offset the effect of price hikes at the gas station: The state’s initiative to bring down commodity prices by up to 30% that it launched during Ramadan has likely helped counterbalance fuel price hikes that came into effect in March, EFG Hermes’ Mohamed Abu Basha told Bloomberg.

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