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Statistics: Russia’s consumer inflation rate continues growing to reach 2% by March 24

MOSCOW, March 26, /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s consumer inflation rate picked up the pace of 0.2 percent in the period from March 18 through March 24, 2014, the Russian State Statistics Service said in its regular report on Wednesday, adding that the indicator has gone up by 0.7 percent since the beginning of March and grown by two percent since the beginning of the year.

Over the same period of the preceding year, consumer prices gained 0.3 percent on March 1-24, as well as had grown by 1.9 percent since January 1, 2013. In March 2013, the country’s inflation was estimated at 0.3 percent.

Shortly ago, Russian Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach forecasted the country’s inflation rate at 0.9-1.0 percent in the current month of the year.

According to the Statistics Service, an average daily growth of prices was at 0.031 percent on March 1-24, as compared to 0.025 percent in February as a whole and 0.032 percent in the period from March 1-17. The Statistics service is confident the consumer inflation may gain 0.96 percent in March if the dynamics remains unchanged before the end of the month. Therefore the index will be within the Economic Development Ministry’s recent forecast. Initially, this March’s inflation rate was projected by Klepach at 0.8 percent.

On March 18 - March 24, the biggest growth was registered for petrol prices (0.6 percent), while Russia’s diesel fuel prices went down by 0.4 percent.

In addition, the prices of granulated sugar grew by 2.0 percent, the statistics said, adding that prices for frozen fish, milk, sour cream, cottage cheese, tea, rice, millet and vodka increased by 0.5-0.9 percent.

Simultaneously, average prices of buckwheat, sunflower oil and vermicelli slid down by 0.1-0.2 percent over the period under review.

In the designated period of time, prices of fruit and vegetables increased by 0.5 percent on average across the country, the statistics says, adding that the prices of potatoes and tomatoes went up by 1.8 percent, while the prices of onions and cabbage grew by 1.1-1.3 percent.

In the mean time, the Statistics Service registered 3.5-percent decline in cucumber prices over the week from March 18 through March 24.

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