Inflation loses momentum and closes out April at 0.43%
Brazil’s official inflation closed out April at 0.43 percent, pressured mainly by food and pharmaceutical prices. The result shows a slowdown for the second month in a row—after the price index IPCA stood at 1.31 percent in February and 0.56 percent in March.
The index is the highest for the month of April since 2023 (0.61%). In April 2024, the hike was 0.38 percent.
In the 12-month span, the IPCA totaled 5.53 percent, therefore above the government’s target (4.5%). In March, the accumulated figure totaled 5.48 percent. The figures were released by the statistics bureau IBGE.
The target set by the National Monetary Council is three percent, with a tolerance of 1.5 percentage points up or down (1.5–4.5%).
Since the beginning of 2025, the target is considered to have been missed if the rate falls outside the tolerance range for six months in a row. Thus, all the results since January have been above the ceiling.
Food and medicine
Of the nine price groups surveyed, eight showed positive inflation, with food and health having the greatest impact. Together, these two groups ed for 0.34 percentage points of the IPCA.
Biggest impact
Despite having the biggest impact on April’s inflation, the food and beverages group showed a slowdown compared to March, when it was 1.17 percent.
Food is the group with the greatest weight in the IPCA, so even though it is slowing down, it still makes a major impact on the average price of Brazilians’ consumer basket. The products that most pushed up the price of food were potatoes (18.29%) and tomatoes (14.32%)
According to Survey Manager Fernando Gonçalves, food inflation is greatly influenced by climatic issues. “A lot of them have to do with the weather—either it rains a lot or it doesn’t rain at all,” he noted.
A respite for transport
The transportation group was the only one to see a drop in prices (-0.38%), a result influenced by the reduction in airline ticket prices (-14.15%), which had the main negative impact on April’s IPCA, with a weight of -0.09 percentage points.
