MOSCOW, April 25 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia’s inflation rate went up by 0.1 percent over a week from April 17 to April 23, the Federal State Statistics Service said in a regular report on Wednesday, adding that the indicator has grown by 1.8 percent since the beginning of the year and has gone up by 0.3 percent since the beginning of the current month.
Touching upon last year’s indicators of the current period, the Statistics Service reaffirmed that the country’s inflation had grown by 4.2 percent up to April 23 since the beginning of 2011. Besides, the April 2011 consumer inflation rate stood at 0.4 percent. Over 23 days of the last year’s April, Russia’s inflation rate went up by 0.4 percent.
After the 0.2-percent hike of the inflation rate on March 20-26, the indicator regained the level of 0.1 percent, which kept at this level eleven weeks in row, the report said, reaffirming that Russia’s weekly inflation remained at the stable level of 0.1 percent in February and March.
In the mean time, in the week from April 17 to April 23, the Statistics Service reported the most considerable hike of prices for lamb, which increased by 1.9 percent.
Besides, prices of tinned meat, heat-treated milk, salt, artificial butter, sausages, hard candy and powdered infant milk mixes went up by 0.2-0.4 percent on average across the country, the report wrote.
Simultaneously, prices of buckwheat and millet continued their slowdown, the reports wrote adding that average prices of buckwheat and eggs dropped by 1.5 percent, while prices of millet went down by 0.9 percent.
In addition, the country’s average prices of sunflower oil decreased by 0.7 percent, while prices of rice and cheese shrank by 0.3 percent and 0.2 percent respectively.
In the designated period, prices of fruit and vegetables grew by 0.5 percent on average across the country, the service said, adding that cabbage prices increased by 3.0 percent, prices of carrots went up by 0.8 percent, and prices of potatoes grew by 1.7 percent.
However, average prices of apples and onions decreased by 0.5 percent and 0.4 percent respectively over the period under review.
In the period from April 17 to April 23, average prices of gasoline went up by 0.3 percent, while prices of diesel fuel remained unchanged as compared to the preceding week, the Statistics Service said in its report.
The report was drafted on the basis of weekly monitoring of retail prices for 62 socially important goods and services, which the Federal State Statistics Service carried out in 271 Russian cities and towns.
The official forecast of the inflation rate for this year remains between five and six percent.
In 2011, Russia’s inflation was the lowest over the past 20 years (6.1 percent).