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Weekly Insight -- Inflation falls sharply in March

Ukraine’s annual inflation slowed further to 3.2% in March from 4.3% in February, which came as a major surprise.

A significant deceleration in consumer prices was largely due to a decline in food prices, which is highly unusual for this time of the year. Prices for food staples declined by 0.2% MoM implying an only marginal growth of 0.2% in YoY terms. A number of significant food basket components were significantly cheaper in YoY terms, namely eggs (-34.3% YoY), sunflower oil (-17.4%), sugar (-13.3%), fruits (-12.2%), and several other items. Price growth also remains weak (or even negative) for many non-food components of the consumer basket, like clothes and footwear (-6.7% YoY), communication (+0.1%), and transportation (+6.0%).