This Friday, the Colombian economy received unwelcome news. The cost of living, measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), experienced its first rebound after two years of decline. With a 1.14% increase in the month, the 12-month figure, which is usually reported, reached 5.28%, surpassing January's data. This figure moves the country further away from the Central Bank's target of maintaining inflation at 3%. It also increases pressure on its board of directors, which will hold its first meeting on March 31 with the two co-directors appointed by President Gustavo Petro. Petro has repeatedly called on this independent body to reduce interest rates—its main tool for containing increases in the cost of living—to facilitate economic growth.
Andrea Ramírez Pisco, the acting director of the state's National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), was responsible for delivering the news. In the monthly press conference held by the agency to release the data, she said that February's inflation was "slightly higher than what we had for the same month in 2024, which was 1.09%." She also noted that so far in 2025, the consumer cost of living has already risen by 2.08%, compared to 2.01% in 2024. This increase has surprised most analysts, as the majority of experts in the Central Bank's monthly survey predicted an increase of around 1%.
February is typically one of the months that contributes most to each year's inflation. As with all beginnings of the year, the effect of the previous year's CPI is transferred to items such as rent, transportation costs, and especially education. These are values regulated by norms, which rise in line with the increase in the cost of living, and hit in a concentrated manner. In fact, in years like 2020 or 2024, February was the month with the highest inflation; in the others, it is usually the second highest. This year, education was by far the category with the highest increase, at 5.57%, while transportation (1.65%) and housing, water, electricity, and gas (1.16%) also pushed prices upward. All of this reflects the impact of those prices tied to past inflation.
The city with the highest increase in the cost of living was Bogotá, with 1.53%. Being the largest of the 38 urban areas studied, it naturally pulls the national figure upward. DANE clarified that the very high increase in the cost of residential gas, 29.83% in the capital, contributed by itself to a 0.26% increase in the cost of living there, but that the increase in transportation (7.3%) was what most pressured the cost of living upward, with 0.33%. In contrast, Medellín was the city with the lowest CPI increase, at 0.62%, and there, none of these items significantly impacted the cost of living.
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