Food prices grew 4.9% on the year in November, prices of non-food items were 2.8% higher, and service prices grew 4.1%.
The annual rate calculated on the basis of the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is 3.7%.
The average consumer price rate based on the CPI over the last 12 months (December 2018-November 2019) as compared to the previous 12 months (December 2017-November 2018) is 3.8%. The average rate based on the HICP is 3.8%.
Since the beginning of 2019, the highest price increases were recorded by potatoes (20.6%), citrus (18.9%), fruit and canned fruit (15.9%), while prices of natural gas and eggs and fell nearly 5% and over 1%, respectively.
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.