The Latin American and Caribbean Energy Organization (OLACDE) has published the Energy Inflation Indicator for Latin America and the Caribbean (IE-LAC) for March 2025, which reached just 0.01%, with year-on-year inflation of 1.15%
Monthly energy inflation in March 2025 reached 0.01%, the lowest figure since October 2024. Comparing March’s inflation this year with that of the previous month shows a sharp drop, since in February 2025 several countries in the region saw electricity price increases of between 10% and 16% and fuel price increases of between 6% and 10%—an effect that was offset during the month under analysis.
This decline is also being driven by the fall in international oil prices, which have been decreasing since August 2024, standing at approximately USD 68 per barrel in March 2025, with the value continuing to trend downward.
With regard to overall inflation, it remained stable during the period analyzed, with an upward trend, in contrast to that of energy inflation, as shown in Figure 1.
In March 2025, annual energy inflation in Latin America and the Caribbean reached 1.15%, a decrease of 63.6% compared to February 2025. Given that annual inflation is calculated relative to the same month of the previous year—that is, comparing annual figures—we observe a lower value in March 2025 compared to March 2024, showing that the impact of fuel price increases or decreases was smaller, and that the international price of oil in March 2024 was above USD 81.
Meanwhile, in March 2025, year-on-year energy inflation in OECD countries fell to 3%, down from 3.62% recorded in February 2025, maintaining its downward trend. It is worth noting that 28 of the 38 OECD countries recorded a decrease in energy inflation for March 2025. Comparing LAC’s energy inflation with that of the OECD, in both cases the trend is downward, with LAC showing greater variation and remaining below the levels presented by the OECD.
Starting with this edition, a comparison is presented between the evolution of monthly energy inflation in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), as calculated by OLACDE, and global energy prices, as estimated by the International Monetary Fund[1]. Figure 4 presents the evolution of four price indices: crude oil, natural gas, coal, and LAC energy inflation.[2] The period analyzed runs from January 2023 to March 2025, all indexed to a base of January 2023.
[1] Information on the data and methodology used by the IMF can be found at: https://www.imf.org/en/Research/commodity-prices
[2] Built using the energy inflation data published by OLACDE; the other three are derived from the prices of major commodities published by the IMF.
One of the main conclusions that can be drawn from the figure above is that nominal international prices for crude oil, natural gas, and coal all trended downward over the period analyzed. In fact, in March 2025 all three indices were below the value observed in January 2023. The LAC index, on the other hand, does not appear to follow this trend—in fact, the latest March 2025 value is 8.7% higher than the January 2023 value.
This result suggests that there is room for energy public policy in LAC to enable consumers to benefit from lower international energy prices, without discouraging investment in the sector.
Finally, the following table presents inflation as of March for each year. This exercise is useful because it eliminates the seasonal component that price time series can present.
