The growth of consumer prices in Ukraine in 2017 accelerated to 13.7 percent compared with 12.4 percent in 2016, which, however, is significantly lower than in the past years: it was 43.3 percent in 2015 and 24.9 percent in 2014, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine reported on January 9.
In December 2017 alone, inflation was 1 percent against 0.9 percent in November and 1.2 percent in October, it said.
The statistics service reported that the average annual inflation in 2017 (January-December to January-December of the previous year) increased to 14.4 percent from 13.9 percent a year earlier.
As reported, the Ukrainian government and the National Bank of Ukraine initially forecast a slowdown in consumer price growth to 8-8.1 percent in 2017. However, during the year they worsened their forecasts. In particular, the government at the end of May revised its inflation forecast from 8 percent to 11.2 percent, and the National Bank’s inflation forecast given in late October was 12.2 percent instead of earlier predicted 9.1 percent; the inflation forecast for 2018 was changed to 7.3 percent from 6.0 percent.
While drafting the national budget for 2018, the Cabinet of Ministers also worsened the inflation forecast for 2018 from 7 percent to 9 percent.
