To help curb stubbornly high food prices that are hitting households hard, the government has announced a list of 44 essential goods, including milk, bread, rice, tomatoes, and some types of meat and fish, whose value added tax (VAT) of 6% will be temporarily removed from April 18. (Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; editing by Andrei Khalip and Alex Richardson)
Messaging: sergio.goncalves.reuters.com@reuters.net)) LISBON, April 11 (Reuters) - Portugal's inflation should
decelerate significantly this month, with prices of final
products benefiting from lower energy and commodity prices,
Finance Minister Fernando Medina said on Tuesday.
Portuguese consumer prices rose 7.4% year-on-year in March,
slowing for the fifth consecutive month after hitting a
three-decade high of 10.1% in October.
Medina told a parliamentary committee that he expected price
declines for products derived from fuel or electricity, as well
as those that depend on international transport costs and
commodity prices.
"Our expectation is that April will be a visible
milestone...that this decrease in inflation will become more
significant already in April and that it will continue in the
following months throughout the year," he said.
The government predicts that average annual inflation will
fall to 4% in 2023, a more optimistic estimate than the 5.4%
forecast by the European Commission. Inflation clocked 7.8% in
2022, the highest level in three decades.
In March, Portuguese energy prices fell 4.4% from a year
ago, when oil and gas prices soared following Russia's invasion
of Ukraine, but unprocessed food prices spiked by 19.3%.
Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy
prices, eased to 7.0% year-on-year from 7.2% in February.
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