"Service prices have once again taken over as the lead contributor to annual price growth. While goods’ price growth decelerated to 1.1%, service price growth accelerated to 3.6%. More expensive dwelling, health, leisure, catering, insurance and beauty services contributed the most to higher service prices," said Swedbank in response to the data.
"In the past six months the annual inflation rate has slowly and consistently decreased. It is expected that the declining trend will come to an end in March when higher excise duties on alcohol come into effect. Annual inflation rate in March will increase but the increase will not be sharp," Swedbank said, adding that with lower inflation but wage growth close to 10% purchasing power will increase faster than expected.