Inflation in Bahrain to ease in a year - Meed

Dubai: Bahrain's inflation is expected to cool slightly in the next 12 months, but food prices remain a challenge, its central bank governor said in remarks published by the London-based weekly Middle East Economic Digest (Meed).

"That is a major concern for us in Bahrain and it is a wild card because we have seen such an increase in food prices in such a short period of time in a very strange way," Rasheed al-Maraj told the magazine, published late on Friday.

Bahrain should rein in state spending as part of plans to curb inflation, Maraj said last week.

Meed quoted him as saying he vowed to tackle the domestic issues that have pushed inflation to 5.24 per cent in March as food prices and rents soared.

"If you look at the component of the CPI for every country in the region ... you will see many of them, like rent and services, are local factors," Maraj said.