The central bank said the high 'headline' inflation showed up through increases in food prices, especially vegetables and fish.

Health and transport contributed to the biggest rise in the core index at 55 percent. The central bank said bus fares, pharmaceuticals and medical specialists’ fees rose.

Miscellaneous goods and services, housing and water also rose.

Core inflation indices were originally developed to provide 'early warning' to monetary policy but has now increasingly come under fire for leading policy makers astray.

In the US the 'core' index has neither food nor energy which its central bank claimed were 'volatile' and dropped. But economists say such goods respond most quickly to central bank money printing.

The current commodity bubble, worsened by massive US money printing since August 2007 has strengthened the case of critics of central banking and weakened the case for using core indices to guide monetary policy.

With economic growth expected to slow worldwide, economic analysts have pointed out that high oil prices can only be explained as a monetary policy led policy bubble.

The bubble was expected to collapse in the wake of the sub-prime credit collapse, as had happened on earlier occasions when the original credit bubbles fired by central bank money printing have collapsed.

Already the US had signaled an end to further money printing with Fed chief Ben Bernanke facing unprecedented criticism from anti-inflation economists for firing a commodity bubble.

Oil prices are now almost 15 dollar below its peak, but whether it is a pause or a burst bubble is not yet clear.

Wheat prices have been falling since February, gold since March and rice since April.

Economists and the International Monetary Fund has said that this is the worst 'broadbased' commodity bubble, since 1973 when the US dollar was forced off the gold standard amid heavy money printing and record budget deficits under President Nixon.