Higher transport costs helped fuel Malaysia's consumer price index to 3.2 percent in February from a year earlier, or 0.1 percent from January, the government said today.

The year-on-year increase was due to gains in all the main indices except clothing and footwear which shrank by 1.5 percent, and communications by 1.0 percent, the Statistics Department said in a statement.

Notable among the increases were transport, which grew 8.1 percent, food and non-alcoholic beverages 4.2 percent and housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels at 1.1 percent, which accounted for 86.9 percent of the overall increase, it said.

Other increases included alcoholic beverages and tobacco at 7.0 percent, restaurants and hotels at 4.3 percent and health at 2.6 percent.