However, in January the CPI excluding food and energy, or the core-core CPI, which is not usually susceptible to fluctuations in commodity prices, fell 1.2 percent year on year, marking the largest drop so far.
Regarding the outlook, the pace of decline in the core CPI is expected to slow, as the robust economic growth in emerging economies is likely to keep commodity prices high and the negative output gap is likely to narrow as the economy recovers.