OREANDA-NEWS   In the period from January 1 to January 12, 2026, prices in Russia increased by 1.26 percent, which, in terms of daily values, is 2.7 times higher than in January last year (1.23 percent). This is reported by Rosstat.

For food products, inflation has been 1.4 percent since the beginning of the month, while prices for fruit and vegetable products have soared by 7.88 percent (cucumber has risen by 21.3 percent), and for the rest — by 0.92 percent.

In the segment of non—food products, the price growth rate reached 0.74 percent, and in the sector of observed services - 1.81 percent. Prices for diesel fuel increased by 1.3 percent, and for gasoline — by 1.2 percent.

The high price increase at the beginning of the year was expected against the background of an increase in value added tax (VAT) from 20 to 22 percent. The Central Bank did not rule out that the sharp slowdown in inflation in December could be offset by the rewriting of price tags at the beginning of the year.

In October, the regulator expected that the VAT increase would add 0.6-0.8 percentage points to inflation in Russia in December-January, but in the future it will become more of a disinflationary factor.