Updates to Praxcore MDB Consensus Inflation Forecasts: December 2025

Overview

Today we updated our MDB Consensus Inflation Forecasts to include data from the ADB’s December Asian Development Outlook (ADO); the IMF will likely update its World Economic Outlook (WEO) in January, and we will update our forecasts accordingly then.

We provide these inflation forecasts as a starting point for your analysis of future project cost estimates. Following are the December highlights:

Overall

There were no major changes to the overall forecast. Like in October, the consensus inflation rate for our Asia-Pacific coverage universe (calculated on a simple average) is forecast to be 4.7% in 2025 and to decelerate to 4.5% in 2026, mainly due to lower food, energy, and administrative costs.

The overall inflation rate for Asia-Pacific still masks significant regional and country-to-country variation in rates. Of the 47 countries in our universe, 26 showed increasing year-over-year inflation from 2025 to 2026; twenty showed a decrease; one remained neutral; there were no changes from October.

By ADB Cooperation Group

With the exception of regions that had Myanmar as a member (GMS and SASEC), ADB cooperation regions still showed relatively tight variation in forecasted rates by country.
CAREC (at a 2026 consensus forecast of 5.3%) showed a slight uptick driven by a higher forecast for Kazakhstan (see next section).

By Country

All 2025 consensus inflation rates, with the exceptions of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Turkiye, and Kazakhstan, are still forecasted to end below double digits. Following forecasted higher prices for food and services, utility rate hikes, and depreciation of the Tenge, Kazakhstan (at a consensus forecast of 10.4%) is expected to join Myanmar and Turkiye in having a double-digit inflation rate in 2026.

Conversely, Afghanistan, Brunei Darussalam, China, Fiji, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, are all forecast to have less than one percent inflation in 2025. Further, Thailand’s rate shows a decrease versus the October forecast; Afghanistan is showing deflation. For all of these countries, 2026 inflation is forecast to be higher than in 2025, but still hovering around one percent or less (except Sri Lanka).

Finally, the majority of countries in our Asia-Pacific coverage universe still have forecasted inflation rates converging on the two percent to five percent range for 2026.


For full details by country see our MDB Consensus Inflation Forecasts.