| THE LOOMING SPECTRUM OF INFLATION 15/04/2008 |
| (2008-04-15) |
| Last updated: 2008-04-16 17:09 EET |
The National Statistics Institute on Monday gave us the bad news we had been expecting: the inflation rate continued to grow, reaching in March the 8.63% threshold which had been calculated for the entire year. Fruit products saw the highest increases in prices as compared to the previous month, almost 4%, followed by edible oil, 3.5%, fuel, over 2%, and telephony services, with almost 2%. Consumption prices went up by 0.67% in March as compared to February. As for the future, the chief economist of the National Bank of Romania, Valentin Lazea, tried to put our minds at ease:
“We’re very close to the forecast made by the National Bank about two months ago. It put the inflation rate at 8.5%, which is close to the 8.6% we’re seeing now, saying this is the highest, the inflation rate will go this year, and that it will start dropping in summer. We maintain our prediction. In the coming months, the inflation rate will stay between 8 and 8.5%, and we are confident that in summer it will start going down and fall below 6% at the end of the year.”
This optimistic view is shared to some degree by the chief economist of the Romanian Commercial Bank, Lucian Claudiu Anghel:
“Even if in the first half of 2008 the inflation rate stays high, there’s sufficient reason to believe that the external environment will be relatively stable, that supply and demand in the agricultural sector will be balanced again and that the national currency will see a slight appreciation.”
But what will happen if the price of natural gas goes up by 19% as required by the main supplier of gas on the Romanian market, E.ON?
“It remains to be seen if their request is accepted, considering that requested sums are generally higher than the actual increase. Also, we mustn’t forget about the consumption basket. It is mainly made up of food products whose prices have grown significantly, so if we have a good crop this year, it would be only natural that these prices should decrease.”
So far, it looks like we’re going to have a good agricultural year, but the world food crisis is playing havoc internationally and it’s hard to believe that Romania will not be affected by the worldwide growth in food price.
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2025-04-03
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