Consumer prices in Japan climbed 1.3 percent in February from a year earlier, for the ninth consecutive month of rise, the government said Friday. The core consumer price index, which excludes fresh food, stood at 100.5 against a base of 100 for 2010, dpa quoted the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications as saying. Higher petrol prices and electricity costs amid the depreciation of the Japanese yen were behind the figures, the ministry said. In April 2013, the Bank of Japan decided to take aggressive monetary easing stops to achieve an inflation target of 2 percent within about 2 years, to fight the deflation that has affected the country for more than a decade. In June, consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in the first increase in 14 months, and in 2013 the index was up 0.4 percent for the first full-year increase in five years.
