Devaluation and excise taxes are pushing prices up, but moderately.
Consumer inflation accelerated at the end of August. This figure rose to 7.5% year-on-year (from 5.4% in July).
This is stated in the macroeconomic and monetary review of the National Bank.
This happened, first of all, as explained by the NBU, due to the limited supply of certain food products.
“Core inflation increased significantly than predicted. After all, businesses began to transfer their costs of raw materials, energy and labor to prices. Price pressure and the effects of the weakening of the hryvnia exchange rate in previous months supported it,” the statement says.
Food inflation is affected by the reduction in product supply due to unfavorable weather conditions. And this factor will probably continue to affect the year. Incidentally, due to the reduction in product supply, world food prices in September grew at the fastest rate in 18 months.
Prices for processed food products also grew, both due to the rise in the cost of food raw materials and the further increase in enterprises' expenses on energy supply and labor costs.
At the same time, most non-food products grew more expensive, primarily under the influence of the exchange rate factor.
At the same time, prices for clothing and footwear fell faster due to increased competition between imported and Ukrainian products.
The growth rate of prices for services accelerated somewhat under pressure from business production costs.
According to the National Bank's report, the growth of fuel prices slowed in August, given the sufficiency of fuel reserves and lower-than-expected oil prices on world markets.
Prices for alcoholic beverages fell more slowly. The rise in price of tobacco products has slowed down somewhat, but their prices were growing at a fairly high rate.
The growth in prices for pharmaceutical products, medical goods and equipment has also accelerated, apparently due to the exchange rate factor.
Recall that the day before, the NBU reported that further acceleration of inflation is expected in the coming months due to an increase in business costs for wages and electricity, an increase in excise taxes and the effects of the hryvnia devaluation pass-through.
And experts reported that food prices will rise in Ukraine in the near future. Read more about this in the news.