OREANDA-NEWS. January 15, 2009. Inflation in Russia amounted to 0.8% on January 1-13, 2009 compared to 2.3% for the whole of January 2008, the Federal State Statistics Service reported. “From January 1 to January 12 inflation came in at 0.8%, this is a normal value and we expected it to be higher”, a source in the Russian government said. The source attributed high inflation to a rise in natural monopoly tariffs effective January 1, as traditionally is the case. According to the Federal State Statistics Service, the beginning of the year saw an upsurge in tariffs for municipal services. Electricity tariffs have been hiked by 15.3% vs. 12.1% in the same period last year and utility bills for federal and municipal residential properties, heating, cold and hot water supply and water removal tariffs rose in the range of 4.1-9.1% vs. 6.4-8.2% in the year-earlier period.