HELSINKI, April 14 (Xinhua) -- While inflation in Finland fell to 7.9 percent in March from 8.8 percent in February, food prices have stayed high, according to data published by Statistics Finland on Friday.
The decrease in inflation was driven by lower petrol and diesel prices, and a smaller-than-expected rise in electricity prices, the agency said.
Food prices, however, remained high in March, representing a 16.2 percent increase from a year earlier. The year-on-year price increase in February was 16.3 percent.
The prices of sugar, flour, and eggs grew the most in March, by more than 30 percent year-on-year. This surpasses the expectations of food price monitoring agency Pellervo Economic Research (PTT), which previously estimated that the upward trend would stop by the end of 2022.
Sari Forsman-Hugg, research director at PTT, was quoted by the Finnish national broadcaster Yle as saying that food prices may stabilize "by the end of spring" and may start to decrease towards the end of this year, depending on crop yields and the evolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Forsman-Hugg also revised PTT's earlier prediction of an average 3 percent price increase for 2023 to around 5 percent.
According to Yle, the last time Finland experienced such a drastic rise in food prices was in the 1970s, during the oil crisis. ■