According to the Bureau for Economic Research (BER), average headline consumer price index (CPI) food price expectations for 2016 and 2017 remained unchanged at 6.2%, relative to the fourth quarter of 2015.
The BER, which released its inflation expectations survey for the first quarter last week, said the average hides meaningful differences among the social groups. While analysts revised their inflation forecasts upwards, trade union officials and business people lowered their average forecasts for both 2016 and 2017.
According to the BER, reasons for the latter's lowering of forecasts include that relatively more respondents expected inflation to be between 4.5% and 5% than between 6% and 6.5%, and that annual inflation in the previous year dropped to 4.6% (in respect of 2015) in the 2016 first quarter survey, whereas it was still 6.1% (in respect of 2014) in the fourth quarter of 2015 survey.
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