The Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (BCRD) reported that the consumer price index (CPI) recorded a variation of 0.31% in May 2026, reflecting a moderation compared to the 0.49% observed in April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This behavior was mainly associated with price decreases in high-weight food items in the family basket, such as chicken (-6.60%) and plantains (-3.89%), which partially offset the increases recorded in regular gasoline (3.87%) and premium gasoline (5.17%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With this result, year-on-year inflation, measured from May 2025 to May 2026, stood at 5.35%, above the upper limit of the target range of 4.0% \u00b1 1.0%, while cumulative inflation during the first five months of the current year was 1.50%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Central Bank highlighted that core inflation, an indicator that allows for clearer signals for the conduct of monetary policy, remained within the target range of 4.0% \u00b1 1.0%, standing at 4.86% year-on-year in May 2026. Likewise, the monthly variation of the core CPI was 0.28% compared to April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The regulatory body explained that this indicator excludes some items that do not typically respond to the economy’s liquidity conditions, including food with high price volatility, fuels, and regulated services such as electricity tariffs and transport, as well as alcoholic beverages and tobacco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Variation by groups<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Transport group recorded a variation of 2.16%, becoming the largest contributor to inflation in the month of May. This result is mainly attributed to the adjustments in the prices of regular and premium gasoline, as well as diesel, ordered by the Government in a context of increases in international oil prices linked to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similarly, increases were observed in airfare rates, intercity bus tickets from unions, and in motorcycle taxi (motoconcho) and public car services. It should be noted that the reductions in the prices of automobiles valued in US dollars partially mitigated the increase in this group, favored by the appreciation of the Dominican peso against the US dollar experienced during the past month, which continued the trend observed since the beginning of the year, accumulating an appreciation of 7.8% at the end of May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, the CPI for the Miscellaneous Goods and Services group showed a variation of 0.42%, driven by price increases in personal care services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Likewise, the Restaurants and Hotels group recorded an inflation of 0.41%, a result of the increases in prepared meal services outside the home, with the dish of the day and the food service with side dishes standing out. In the opposite direction, price reductions in chicken service had an impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the particular case of the Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages group, the monthly variation was -0.58%, due to price decreases observed in food products with high weighting in the consumption basket, such as fresh chicken and plantains in all their varieties, which had experienced significant increases from the end of 2025 to January 2026 as a result of the weather phenomena that affected the country last year. Other goods recorded price increases, including purified water, tomatoes, vegetables, soft drinks, regular beef, bread, and coffee, limiting the negative variation of this group’s index.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similarly, the Recreation and Culture group presented a rate of -0.98%, explained mainly by reductions in the prices of tourist packages compared to the month of April, when the seasonal effect of Holy Week took place, in addition to the impact of the exchange rate appreciation on packages quoted in US dollars. Meanwhile, the Health category exhibited a variation of 0.36%, supported mainly by price increases in some pharmaceutical products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tradable and non-tradable goods<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The CPI for tradable goods showed a variation of 0.66% in May 2026, driven by price increases in regular and premium gasoline, diesel, airfare rates, and some food products. On the other hand, the non-tradable goods and services index recorded an inflation of -0.04%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Incidence by geographical regions<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inflation by geographic region during May 2026, compared to April, showed a variation of 0.27% in the Ozama region \u2014which includes the National District and the Santo Domingo province\u2014, 0.34% in the North or Cibao region, 0.51% in the East region, and 0.16% in the South region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Central Bank indicated that the greater variation observed in the East region was mainly due to increases in the Transport group, particularly in land transport services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In contrast, the lower price growth recorded in the South region was associated with the negative impact of the Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages group, which has a higher weighting within the consumption basket of that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inflation by income quintiles<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The measurement of inflation by quintiles reflects that lower-income households (quintiles 1, 2, and 3) recorded lower price variations, favored by the reductions observed in the Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In that sense, rates of 0.11% were verified for quintile 1, 0.18% for quintile 2, and 0.25% for quintile 3, while the higher-income quintiles recorded higher rates, with variations of 0.29% in quintile 4 and 0.56% in quintile 5, respectively, mainly due to the higher incidence of price increases in the Transport group, especially for fuels and airfares. These results show that the reductions recorded in food prices benefited lower-income households to a greater extent, while households with higher purchasing power were more impacted by the increases in petroleum derivatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (BCRD) reported that the consumer price index (CPI) recorded a variation of 0.31% in May 2026, reflecting a moderation compared to the 0.49% observed in April. This behavior was mainly associated with price decreases in high-weight food items in the family basket, such as chicken (-6.60%) and plantains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phj1q1-28S0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","dum_api":{"author_name":"Mart\u00edn Adames","author_image":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/cropped-WhatsApp-Image-2025-02-11-at-11.04.20-AM-96x96.jpeg","categories_name":["Uncategorized"],"featured_media_url":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}