Bulgaria’s annual consumer price index (CPI) rose by 4.8 per cent in September, up from 3.7 per cent inflation recorded a month earlier, data released by the National Statistical Institute (NSI) on 18 October showed.
This was the highest year-on-year increase in consumer prices since September 2012, when the figure was 4.9 per cent. It was also the first time that the annual CPI was over the four per cent threshold since January 2020, when the figure was 4.1 per cent.
Consumer prices rose by 0.4 per cent on a monthly basis in September, the tenth time monthly inflation was recorded over the previous 12 months, which also saw two months of deflation.
Beyond the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the inflation indicator, it limited NSI’s ability to collect the data, with the statistics body saying that it had to extrapolate about two per cent of the total consumer price index, the same as a month earlier.
Food prices in September were 1.2 per cent higher compared to the previous month, while non-food prices rose by 0.6 per cent and services prices fell by 0.9 per cent. Compared to September 2020, food prices were 4.4 per cent higher, while non-food and services prices rose by five per cent each.
The harmonised CPI figure, calculated by NSI for comparison with European Union data, rose by 0.2 per cent on a monthly basis in September, while the annual harmonised CPI inflation was four per cent, the highest since March 2011, when it was 4.6 per cent.
Food and beverage prices were four per cent higher, on an annual basis, while the price of utilities and housing increased by 5.6 per cent and transportation costs were 12 per cent higher compared to September 2020. The three categories account for about 48.8 per cent of the harmonised CPI basket.