Year-on-year inflation down to 7% last month; first winter food-price drop

Year-on-year inflation dropped in February to approximately 7% in comparison to 7.4% in January of this year, while month to month inflation amounted to 0.5%. However, the Main Statistical Office (GUS) announced that food and non-alcoholic beverage prices fell 0.1% in the second part of February in comparison to the first two weeks of that month and were 0.2% lower than in the second half of January this year. Director of the Government Center for Strategic Studies (RCSS) Tadeusz Chroscicki noted that food prices decreased during the winter for the first time; normally such price drops occur during the summer. In his opinion the situation resulted from lower demand in February. Chroscicki also believes that a mild deflationary trend will persist in March, and other economists have made similar forecasts. Inflation figures given by other analysts do not differ by more than 0.1% from each other.(Prawo i Gospodarka, p.2) A.D