Despite higher mortgage interest costs, lower energy prices helped bring annual price growth back towards the central bank’s 2% target. It anticipates that the inflation rate will sit around 3% by the summer and return to the target level by the end of 2024.

Grocery prices rose by 9.7% compared with the same time last year, although that marked a slower clip than February’s 10.6% year-over-year growth.

The Bank of Canada hiked its benchmark interest rate eight times over a 12-month period since March 2022 in a bid to tackle rampant inflation, which saw the consumer price index peak at a 39-year high of 8.1% in June.

It has made no change to that trendsetting rate in its last two announcements, with its next decision set to arrive in June.