November 12 (SeeNews) - Austria's Erste banking group has cut its forecast for the growth of Serbia's consumer price index (CPI) in 2019 to 1.8% from 2.0% predicted earlier, it said on Tuesday.
The bank has also lowered its forecast for Serbia's CPI in 2020 by 0.3 percentage points to 1.7%, it said in an instant comment following the release of Serbia's consumer price inflation data.
"We expect only slight upside potential for the last two readings of the year, with expected prints closer to the 1.5% mark, due to some demand-pull pressures which could intensify after the public sector wage hike in November," Erste said.
The decision of Serbia's central bank, the NBS, to cut its key repo rate to 2.25% from 2.5% last week should help inflation rate slowly increase in the medium term, the bank said.
Serbia's average consumer prices rose by 1.0% year-on-year in October, after growing by 1.1% in September, official statistics showed on Tuesday. On a monthly comparison basis, Serbia's CPI grew by 0.1% in October, after falling by 0.5% in September.
Serbia's average annual consumer price inflation slowed to 2.0% last year from 3.0% in 2017.