Malaysia's inflation, as measured by consumer price index (CPI), rose 3.9 percent year-on-year in May, due to higher transportation and food costs, government figures showed on Wednesday.
The number was down from April's 4.4 percent, Malaysia's Department of Statistics said in a statement.
Core inflation rose 2.6 percent in May compared to the same month of the previous year, while CPI for the period from January to May registered an increase of 4.3 percent as compared to the same period last year, it said.
According to the statement, the increase of CPI in May were mainly due to the indices of transport (+13.1 percent), food & non-alcoholic beverages (+4.4 percent).
Other categories that recorded increases were recreation services & culture (+2.9 percent), health (+2.9 percent), restaurants and hotels (+2.3 percent) and housing, water, electricity, gas & other fuels (+2.2 percent).
Sia Ket Ee, an economist with HongLeong Investment Bank, said he expects inflation to moderate further as the impact of base effect continues to ebb off, which was reinforced by recent weakening of crude oil price.
"At the same time, we also expect demand-driven inflation to be contained. We maintain our full year CPI growth forecast at 3.4 percent year-on-year," he told Xinhua in an email.
CIMB Investment Bank's economics research head Michelle Chia maintains her full year inflation forecast at 3.5 percent.
"While food inflation inched up ahead of the fasting month, global oil prices continued to weaken in June. We expect the moderation in fuel price inflation to contain inflationary pressures going forward," she said in an email to Xinhua.