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BNR upwardly revises its year-end inflation forecast to 4.9%
The National Bank of Romania (BNR) has upwardly revised its inflation forecast for the end of 2024 to 4.9% from previously 4%, and expects it to reach 3.5% at the end of 2025, shows data presented on Monday by BNR governor Mugur Isarescu.
According to the presentation, oscillations in the CPI inflation rate are generated by the basic effects associated with past developments: the removal from the calculation of the annual inflation rate of the January 2024 indirect tax increases, as well as of the Q2 gas and unprocessed food price cuts etc.
Re-entry into the inflation target range is expected to happen in the first part of 2026. The upward revision from the numbers projected in the previous Inflation Report, notably in the first part of the projection range, yet with a persistent effect in the medium-term too, is mainly linked to the worse than anticipated recent developments in the food segment.
"What we know for sure is that a fiscal-budgetary correction is in store, which will also result in an external adjustment. Both twin deficits are around 8%, so it is difficult to say that the non-governmental sector would contribute too much or significantly to the external deficit. The public deficit is roughly equal to the external deficit. The corrections that will be made to the public deficit will of course reflect in the external deficit too. We do not have hard data regarding the manner in which these corrections will be done, and consequently this forecast is based only on what we know at present. It does not include the fiscal-budgetary correction measures that will be implemented next year, and depending on them the inflation rate may be higher or lower," the BNR governor explained.