Food prices rise slowly, curbing first quarter inflation to 7.5%, say analysts

Food prices rose 0.6% in January, announced the Central Statistics Office (GUS) yesterday, leading analysts to believe that year-on-year inflation has dropped to 7.5%-8%. Iwona Pugacewicz-Kowalska from the CDM Pekao SA brokerage said that the inflation rate is likely to be heading further down in the first quarter of the year, but the trend could be reversed in the second quarter, as prices fell in that period of last year. Tadeusz Chroscicki from the Government Center for Strategic Studies (RCSS) said that he expects January-to-January inflation to be no higher than 7.5%, down from 8.5% in December. (Rzeczpospolita, p.B1) T.J