Malaysian inflation in July 2026: what headline CPI, core inflation and inflation breadth each answer
Headline and core inflation were each 1.8 percent in July 2026, while the share of Consumer Price Index items recording monthly price increases was 45.5 percent in the second quarter.
Reporting sourcesBank Negara MalaysiaBank Negara MalaysiaBank Negara MalaysiaDepartment of Statistics Malaysia
Three different numbers described Malaysian inflation in the same period, and each answers a different question. Reading them as competing estimates of one quantity is the quickest way to misread all three.
Headline inflation answers what the whole basket did. In the Consumer Price Index release the Department of Statistics Malaysia published on 17 August 2026, the index rose 1.8 percent year on year in July 2026 compared with 1.9 percent in June 2026, with the index level at 137.1 in July 2026 against 134.7 in July 2025. It counts every item, including the ones whose prices swing hardest and the ones an administered price schedule sets.
Core inflation answers what is left when those two groups are taken out. Bank Negara Malaysia states that core inflation is computed by excluding price-volatile and price-administered items. In Monetary and Financial Developments in July 2026, published on 28 August 2026, the central bank reported core inflation of 1.8 percent year on year in July 2026 against 1.9 percent in June 2026 — the same rate as headline, moving by the same 0.1 percentage point. The matching readings show why the measures must be read with their different coverage rather than treated as interchangeable labels.
Inflation breadth answers how widely prices are rising, not how fast. In its second-quarter release Bank Negara Malaysia reported that the share of Consumer Price Index items recording monthly price increases rose to 45.5 percent in the second quarter of 2026 from 38.3 percent in the first quarter, close to its historical average of 45.6 percent. A rate can ease while the share of items rising goes up, and in this period both statements hold at once.
The periods do not line up, and that limit belongs in the reading. The headline and core figures above are monthly, for July 2026; the breadth figure is quarterly, for the second quarter of 2026. Over a longer window, the Monetary Policy Statement of 3 September 2026 records that headline inflation averaged 1.8 percent and core inflation averaged 2.0 percent in the first seven months of 2026 — a stretch in which core ran above headline on average, unlike the single month of July. No measure here is stated for any month after July 2026.