Africa-Press – Angola. The Bank of Portugal (BdP) this week revised the inflation rate this year to 5.5 percent, above the 4.0 percent forecast by the Government, warning of the acceleration in the price of food goods.
According to Lusa, the March economic bulletin by the institution led by Mário Centeno projects that the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) will fall from 8.1 percent in 2022 to 5.5 percent in 2023, and drops to 3.2 percent in 2024 and to 2.1 percent in 2025.
This scenario compares with expected inflation in December of 5.8 percent and 3.3 percent in 2024, as well as the executive’s forecast of 4.0 percent for this year.
The BdP forecasts that the IPHC excluding energy goods will reach a rate of 6.7 percent this year, 3.2 percent in 2024 and 2.4 percent in 2025.
The supervisor explains that, “in the coming quarters, the decline in inflation will essentially be based on the evolution of energy and food prices, but its magnitude is uncertain”.
It also points out that “the moderation in the increase in the prices of other goods and services will be slower, due to the lagged effects of the prices of energy goods, the recovery of profit margins and the growth of wages”.
“The persistence of strong price increases in the euro area, particularly in components with less volatile prices, has fueled expectations of a more restrictive monetary policy over the projection horizon”, he says.
The BdP warns, however, that, “despite the reduction in total inflation, the year-on-year rate of change in food prices continued to increase, standing at 19.0 percent in February 2023”.
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