Zero inflation possible in August - Forex Club
2011-08-09 15:25:21
Inflation rates in August may appear close to a zero rate. This will be promoted by absence of the price growth for fuel on the background of reduction in the oil prices on the world market, Mykola Ivchenko, head of the information-analytical center Forex Club in Ukraine said.
According to him, prices for vegetables and fruits can continue their seasonal drop. "However, this cannot be said about meat, fish, milk and eggs, which allows slight inflation in August. Final annual growth rates of consumer prices may be about 11%," the expert predicts.
In July, deflation was fixed in Ukraine to the amount of 1.3% against a price rise of 0.4% in June. The main reason of deflation over the previous month, according to Ivchenko, were reduced prices for food, decelerated price growth for transport services, utility and communal services and alcoholic and tobacco goods.
Food products in the previous month reduced prices by 2.6% against their growth by 0.3% in June. However, this happened mainly thanks to reduction of prices for vegetables by 32.6% due to growing demand for national products.
Traditional summer reduction of prices for fruits by 3.7% against their growth by 2.1% in June made positive influence on inflation.
But prices for meat products, fish, vegetable oil and eggs continued to grow, which is not typical for this month. Prices for meat and meat products grew by 2.8%, fish - by 1.1%, vegetable oil - by 3.1% and eggs - by 10.8%.
"Growth rates for transport services in July, which recently became one of main inflation catalysts, also slowed down from 0.8% tо 0.7%. This took place mainly due to the fall of prices for fuel and motor gasoline by 0.2% last month on the background of reduction of the world oil prices. More moderate growth of prices for alcohol and tobacco goods by 0.2% against 0.4% in June was reached at the expense of considerable wholesale turnover of those goods over the holiday season," Mykola Ivchenko informed.
According to the State Statistics Service, over January-July, inflation was 4.6% in Ukraine.
Earlier, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry has lowered the inflation rate by 0.3 percentage points to 8.9% in 2011.