The Financial Post reports in its Wednesday edition that Canada's inflation rate for January decelerated to 2.9 per cent, dropping more than economists were predicting and possibly opening a window for the Bank of Canada to start cutting rates as early as June. The Post's Gigi Suhanic writes that the BOC had forecast 3.2-per-cent inflation. The share of inflation accelerating at 5 per cent shrank to 28 per cent in January from a high of 68 per cent in May, 2022, wrote Abby Xu, an economist at Royal Bank of Canada, as "the effect of past rate hikes feed into consumer prices persistently with a lag." Still, the "breadth" of inflation is greater than would allow to hit the Bank of Canada's target of 2 per cent, she said in a note Tuesday. Ms. Xu expects shelter inflation to remain "sticky" as homeowners renew mortgages at higher interest rates and rents stay high due to the housing supply shortage. The economist does not believe the central bank should be in a rush to start cutting. A stronger-than-expected jobs market gives the Bank of Canada room to wait and see if inflation is really on the way down, Ms. Xu said. "As of now, our base case assumes the BOC starts to lower interest rates around mid-year," she said.