It is the third time the country records negative inflation rate since 1958, when the national institute of statistics started tracking consumer prices. The other two were in August 2014 (-0.1 percent) and September 2014 (-0.2 percent).
Year-on-year, energy cost dropped 9.1 percent in January while prices of transport fell 4.2 percent. Additional downward pressure were recorded for housing, water, electricity and gas (-1.2 percent) and recreation and culture (-0.5 percent).
On the other hand, prices increased for restaurants and hotels (+0.9 percent), furnishing and household equipment (+0.5 percent), clothing and footwear (+0.2 percent) and food and non-alcoholic beverages (+0.1 percent).
In December last year, the inflation was 0.0 percent.
On a monthly basis, consumer prices declined by 0.4 percent in the first month of 2015, after being unchanged in December. The fall was mostly attributed to a decline in prices of energy products (-3.73 percent), which led to drops in cost of transport (-3.3 percent), electricity (-2.2 percent) and services related to transport (-2.3 percent), on which seasonal factors had an impact. The decline was partially balanced by an increase in prices of fresh vegetables (+6.8 percent), on which seasonal factors had an impact too.
The harmonized index declined by 0.5 percent with respect to January 2014, and fell 2.5 percent with respect to the previous month. Figures for December of 2014 were revised to - 2.5 percent YoY from -2.4 percent and 0.5 percent MoM from -0.4 percent.