Food prices grew 4.16% on the year in October 2019, service prices grew 4.14% and prices of non-food items increased by 2.57%.
The annual rate calculated on the basis of the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is 3.3%.
Since the beginning of 2019, the highest price increases were recorded by citrus (25.17%), potatoes (19.8%) and fruit and canned fruit (16.02%), while prices of eggs and natural gas fell nearly 3% and 4.3%, respectively.
The average consumer price rate based on the consumer prices index (CPI) over the last 12 months (November 2018-October 2019) as compared to the previous 12 months (November 2017-October 2018) is 3.7%. The average rate based on the HICP is 3.8%.
Romania’s central bank has lowered its year-end inflation forecast to 3.8% for 2019, from a previous forecast of 4.2%. The 2020 inflation forecast was also lowered to 3.1% from a previous projection of 3.4%. The central bank expects annual inflation will remain outside the central bank’s target variation band of 1.5%-3.5% throughout the rest of 2019 due to unfavorable shocks in the first half of the year and is then seen stabilizing around the upper band of the target.