WARSAW, March 13, 2008 (AFP) - Consumer price inflation will hit five percent by mid-2008, driven by increases in the price of natural gas, electricity and food, Poland's deputy minister of finance said Tuesday.

'The price of gas, electricity and food will have a fundamental influence on shaping inflation in the second quarter,' Stanislaw Gomulka said, quoted by Poland's PAP news agency.

'In my opinion it will increase to five percent between the second and third quarters, and should begin to fall in the second half of the year,' he said.

The Finance Ministry estimated Tuesday that March year-on-year inflation was at 4.1 percent and up 0.3 percent from February.

Official figures put CPI at 4.2 percent in February after 4.3 percent in January and 4.0 percent in December.

Prices rose 0.4 percent in February compared to January, according to the national statistics office.

The finance ministry has said it expects annual average inflation -- a key yardstick for countries planning to adopt the euro -- to hit 4.5 percent this year, up from earlier forecasts for 3.5 percent.

In 2007, inflation was 2.5 percent, compared with 1.0 percent in 2006.

Would-be eurozone members are meant to keep annual average inflation below the current European Union-set benchmark of just under 2.0 percent.

Poland is a part of the 27-nation EU but is not among the 15 member states that have adopted the euro.

Warsaw, which joined the EU in 2004, hopes to meet the EU's Maastricht Treaty criteria for adoption of the European single currency by 2009 but has refused to set a date for the actual switch from the Polish zloty.