In 2014, the annual inflation rate dropped to a post-communist era low of 0.8%.
Prices of food products went up 0.5% on the month in February, while non-food items were by 0.4% more expensive, the data showed. Service prices, on the other hand, were down 0.2% compared with January.
Romanians paid 3.7% more for vegetables in February compared with a month earlier, while fruit prices increased 3.3%. In the non-food sector, most of the growth was due to price of fuels, which was up 1.9% on the month, while the electricity cost rose 0.2%. Among prices of services, telephony costs were 1.3% lower in February compared with the previous month.
Compared with February 2014, food product prices went down 0.5%, but the prices of non-food items and services rose 0.6% and 1.5%, respectively.
The central bank has recently reduced its inflation expectations for this year to a rate of 2.1% at the end of the year, from 2.2% previously seen. The lower price growth is due to the “steeper year-on-year drop in volatile prices”, mainly on account of the oil price decline, the persistence of the negative output gap, and the weak economic recovery and subdued inflation in Europe.