Winter sales of clothing and footwear contributed 1.1 percentage points to the monthly deflation as clothing prices fell by 16.3% and footwear was 11.4% cheaper.

Electricity prices dropped by 2.8% to contribute 0.1 point to monthly deflation. January also saw a 9.4% drop in passenger air fares and a 4.5% fall in prices of sports equipment.

Meanwhile, January also brought a 34.4% surge in prices of health insurance, as well as higher prices of vegetables (+7.5%), fruit (+4.3%), to name but the most substantial hikes.

Year-on-year, services were 1.8% costlier and price of goods rose by 0.4%. Non-durable goods were marked up by 1.5%, and durable goods prices and semi-durable goods prices fell by 2.0% and 1.8%, respectively.

Lower prices of clothing and footwear also contributed to a decrease in consumer prices at the annual level as did the prices of petroleum products and of second-hand motor cars (by 0.2 points each)

On the other hand, hikes in the prices in the group housing, water, electricity and gas had the biggest impact on annual inflation (0.5 pp).

Electricity prices rose by as much as 9.8% in a year and utility services were 6.1% costlier.

Prices of alcoholic beverages and tobacco rose 2.6% year on year, while food and non-alcoholic beverages were 1.6% dearer. The two groups contributed 0.2 and 0.3 points to annual inflation, respectively.

Measured with the harmonised index of consumer prices, an EU gauge, the annual inflation rate in January was 0.9%, while consumer prices fell by 0.6% on the monthly basis.

Tatjana Bervar of the Statistics Office's price statistics department told reporters on Friday that minor methodological changes had been introduced to the consumer price index as of this year.

"The proportion of costs for food has been increasing and people no longer tend to buy the things they don't need so much," she explained the reason for the changed weighs in the price index.