CAIRO  - Egypt's annual urban consumer inflation rose to 7.2% in January from 7.1% in December, the official statistics agency CAPMAS said on Monday.

Month-on-month urban headline inflation stood at 0.7% from December, the agency said.

Inflation remains within the central bank's target range of 9%, plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Egypt is emerging from a three-year IMF-backed economic reform programme that saw inflation soar as high as 33% during 2017.

The government has raised domestic fuel prices several times, most recently in July, as part of the terms of the $12 billion agreement.

That has in turn driven up prices of food, including fruit and vegetables, with the government and military occasionally intervening to provide staple products at below-market rates.

Over the past two years price rises have slowed, with annual headline inflation had dropping to 3.1% in October, its lowest since 2005, according to Refinitiv data.

(Reporting by Yousef Saba, Maher Chmaytelli, Ulf Laessing; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Louise Heavens) ((Ulf.Laessing@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: follow me on twitter @ulflaessing))