Consumer prices rose 1.9% in September, INDEC, the national statistics agency, said on Tuesday, up from August’s 1.7%, the slowest monthly rise in 14 months.

Prices are 33.4% higher than a year ago, a hair below the 33.5% of August, and 23.6% higher than in December 2025, according to INDEC’s consumer price index. Inflation has stayed below 2% for two straight months, after a 2.1% reading in July.

Utility bills rose fastest. INDEC said the housing, water, electricity, gas and fuels division rose 3.1%, the largest of the 12 it tracks, followed by education at 3.0%. Food and non-alcoholic drinks, the heaviest item in the basket, rose 2.0% and added more to the monthly figure than any other division in every region except Greater Buenos Aires. Services rose 2.4% in the month and goods 1.7%.

INDEC splits the index into three groups. Prices the government sets or approves, such as gas, electricity and private health plans, rose 2.3%. Seasonal items, mainly vegetables, rose 2.9%. Core inflation, which strips out both and shows the underlying trend, eased to 1.7% from 1.8% in August. In Greater Buenos Aires, rents rose 1.9% in the month and 40.4% over twelve months, INDEC’s regional tables show.

For household budgets, INDEC’s basic baskets rose less than prices overall for the first time in four months. A family of four in Greater Buenos Aires needed 1,632,505 pesos (US$1,064 at the Banco Nación’s 1,535-peso selling rate on Oct. 13) in September to stay above the poverty line, 1.7% more than the 1,605,497 pesos of August, INDEC reported. To avoid being counted as destitute, the same household needed 738,690 pesos (US$481), the cost of its basic food basket.

Over twelve months, though, the total basket rose 38.7% and the food basket 40.0%, faster than the 33.4% rise in consumer prices, INDEC data show. INDEC measures poverty against the total basket, and poverty rose to 32.3% in the first half of 2026.

Presidential spokesman Adrián Ravier called the reading “a good number compared with where we have come from,” noting that monthly inflation was 25% in December 2023, and repeated the government’s aim of bringing annual inflation to single digits. Felipe Núñez, an adviser to the Economy Ministry, wrote on X that it was the lowest September figure since 2017 but was still affected by the repricing of utilities.

The central bank’s survey of private forecasters (REM) expects monthly inflation of 1.7% in October, 1.6% in November and 1.8% in December, ending 2026 near 30%. INDEC publishes October’s figure on Nov. 12.