RPP: Inflation this year will be lower than 1,7 percent

The Council of Monetary Policy (RPP) announced that it forecasts inflation in 2016 to be lower than the 1,7 percent previously predicted in the budgetary bill. This will be due to the presence of inflationary fiscal policy, the main cause of which will be a tax on  large-area stores. The bill had assumed that after a deflationary period in 2015, inflation would reach a rate of 1,7 percent, hoping that this would be caused by the implementation of a tax on large surface-area store, a steady decline in supply shocks on energy commodity markets, and an increase in the rise of prices of food caused by an unfavorable harvest in 2015. However, the continued drop in global energy commodity prices, most notably crude oil, has prompted the RPP head Marek Belka to state that CPI inflation will fall below the previous estimate of 1,7 percent; he revealed that as a result, in its March forecasts, the RPP's inflation prediction will be a few tenths of a percent lower than in the previous documents.