Consumer Prices Decline for 3rd Straight Month
Electricity prices played the leading role in pushing Estonia's consumer price index down 0.4 percent between October and November, a result that follows declines of 0.3 percent in both of the previous two months.
Electricity was also the main factor in the 1.5 percent year-on-year rise in CPI recorded in November, according to Statistics Estonia.
In the monthly comparison, two-fifths of the price index drop was caused by a decline in housing expenditures, 80 percent of which was tied to a 2.4 percent decrease in electricity prices, while a 17.8 percent plummet in plane ticket prices accounted for a third of the shrinkage.
Echoes of two major events that happened in the country on January 1 are still showing up in the year-on-year CPI figures. The first is the market deregulation that led to household electricity prices being 26.8 percent higher this November than they were a year ago. More than half of the resulting overall price rise was canceled out, however, by the introduction of free public transport for residents in the capital. In addition, motor fuel was 4.7 percent cheaper last month than it was in November of 2012.