of the maximum post-2019 headline price-level gap was still present in December 2025.
Published researchVersion 1.0 · 13 August 2026
Consumer prices · 2019–2025 · revised official series
Inflation slowed.Consumer prices remained 19.2% above December 2019.
Saint Lucia’s annual inflation rate fell sharply after 2022. That did not undo most of the earlier increase. This paper separates the speed of price change from the price level households and firms continued to face.
The evidence in one minute
Official revised all-items CPI was 19.2% higher in December 2025 than in December 2019.
The April 2026 consolidated revised index rose from 100.58 to 119.87. Its 12-month rate peaked at 10.97% in October 2022.published divisions ended 2025 above their December 2019 level.
divisions had positive 12-month changes in December 2025.
in 2025, after 9.7% in 2022, 3.9% in 2023 and -0.8% in 2024.
Synthetic fixed-weight attribution
Housing, food and transport dominate the public-table account.
Synthetic attribution using the displayed February 2016 CPI weights.Rounded division values reproduce the published all-items index approximately; the method table reports the discrepancy.
Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, December 2019 to December 2025.
Food and non-alcoholic beverages remained well above the pre-surge benchmark.
Transport rose through the full window and continued rising after 2022.
Education was the sole published division below its December 2019 index level.
After the 2022 surge
Division-level increases and decreases nearly cancelled out from December 2023 to December 2025.
From December 2023 to December 2025, the all-items index moved by about 0.01%. Several divisions were moving much more sharply in opposite directions.Continued upward after 2022
- Miscellaneous goods and services: +17.47%
- Health: +10.38%
- Transport: +8.43%
- Communication: +6.87%
Partial reversal after 2022
- Housing and utilities: -7.00%, but still +32.95% from 2019
- Food: -0.68%, but still +18.38% from 2019
- Furnishings and household maintenance also fell
- A division decline does not mean every item became cheaper
Decision use
Use this paper as the diagnosis, then test the cost chains that policy can change.
The CPI establishes what happened to the price level. It does not prove whether freight, energy, taxes, wages, margins or another mechanism caused a particular change.Separate the three policy jobs
Disinflation slows new increases. Targeted reforms can lower selected prices. Affordability improves when essential costs fall or real household income rises.
Make competitive food cheaper
Measure saleable kilograms per acre, cost per kilogram, spoilage and reliable buyer orders. Support local production only where delivered cost and quality can compete.
Remove time from freight
Measure median and worst-case hours, storage days and EC dollars from vessel arrival to container exit, then test pre-arrival and risk-based release.
Get more from each kilowatt
Compare lifetime cost per reliable kWh and energy per service unit before scaling renewable, grid or efficiency spending.
Cut waste in public purchasing
Aggregate suitable repeat purchases, compare total ownership cost and publish delivered unit prices, defects, inventory and payment time.
Use relief as a bridge
Target, fund, cap and time-limit support while structural reforms take effect. Consumer Affairs should verify pass-through, but a scoreboard is not the treatment.
Evidence boundary
Study limits: national CPI does not measure household hardship or identify causes.
The limits narrow the claim. They do not erase the revised-series result.February 2016 basket
The displayed weights may not represent spending patterns throughout 2019–2025.
Public tables are non-additive
Rounded division data do not exactly reproduce the official headline index.
No household-specific burden
The paper does not estimate inflation by income, district, family structure or renter status.
No causal shock attribution
CPI cannot isolate freight, fuel, taxes, policy, wages, margins or firm behaviour.
Why an earlier CSO page implies 16.5%
Older stand-alone 2019 and 2025 pages remain online with values of 101.18 and 117.83. That older publication vintage implies 16.46%. It is not combined with the later revised history.
Which series this paper uses
The paper uses the CSO’s later April 2026 consolidated revised tables for 2018–2021 and 2022–2025 throughout. Those values reproduce the separately published revised annual rates. The Government says the revision followed CPI database modernisation and quality assurance; a cell-level revision bridge has not been published.
Michel, K. L. (2026). The Inflation That Remained: Sources and Retention of Consumer-Price Increases in Saint Lucia, 2019–2025 (Version 1.0). Saint Lucia Policy Analysis. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21923881