Canada’s rate of inflation accelerated by more than expected for the second straight month, but the gains that are largely driven by higher gasoline prices may allow the Bank of Canada to look past the setback, Bloomberg News reported. The consumer price index rose 4% in August from a year ago, the quickest pace since April, following a 3.3% increase in July, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday in Ottawa. That’s faster than the median estimate of 3.8% in a Bloomberg survey of economists. On a monthly basis, the index rose 0.4%, double the expectations. Two key yearly inflation measures that filter out index components with extreme price fluctuations and are tracked closely by the central bank — the so-called trim and median core rates — also increased, averaging 4% from an upwardly revised 3.75% a month earlier, exceeding the 3.7% pace expected by economists. A three-month moving average of the measures that Governor Tiff Macklem has flagged as key to his team’s thinking rose by a full percentage point to an annualized pace of 4.49%, according to Bloomberg calculations.
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