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RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The inflation rate in Brazil rose to 4.31 percent in 2019, the country's highest since 2016, the state-run Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) announced Friday in a report.

The rate is slightly higher than the government's 2019 goal of 4.25 percent.

According to the IBGE report, inflation hit 1.15 percent in December 2019, more than doubling the November 2019 rate of 0.51 percent, and reaching the highest level for the month since 2002, when it rose to 2.1 percent.

The IBGE report stated that the increase in 2019 was mainly due to the inflation in food and drink prices, which hit 6.37 percent, followed by the sector of health and personal care, which rose to 5.41 percent, and transportation with an inflation rate of 3.57 percent.

Meat was the main driver of price hikes in Brazil last year, with an increase of 32.4 percent. Had meat prices remained stable in 2019, the IBGE report said, overall inflation would have been 3.54 percent.

For 2020, the Brazilian government has set an inflation target of 4 percent, with a tolerance margin of 1.5 percentage points. The financial sector predicts a rate of 3.6 percent for the year.