Fuel prices at the pumps in May 2015.
Prices in Jamaica rose during 2015 by their lowest in 32 years. One has to go back to 1983 to find a lower rate of increase with the rate for that year was up by 2.964 percent.
Last year prices increased 3.66 percent with the rate of increase in December being 0.2 percent. A major factor in the deceleration in average prices, is the sharp fall in the price of petroleum prices on the world market as well as some other imported commodities. The decline would have been even lower but for the fact the devaluation of the Jamaican dollar would have pushed up the prices of some goods or prevented some from falling even lower than they did. in addition increased taxation also prevented prices from falling further.
In 2015, the Jamaican dollar lost 5 percent of its value with about half of the increase feeding into inflation.
