Consumer prices: provisional data

In January 2014, according to provisional estimates, the Italian consumer price index for the whole nation (NIC) rose by 0.2% compared with the previous month and by 0.7% with respect to January 2013 (the same annual rate of December 2013).

The stability of inflation was due, on the one hand, to the reduction of inflationary trend for most aggregates of goods and services, especially for Unprocessed food and, on the other hand, to the acceleration of the annual growth of prices of Services related to transport and, to a lesser extent, to the further reduction of the decline, on annual basis, of prices of Non-regulated energy products.

Core inflation (All-items excluding energy and unprocessed food) rose to 1.0% from 0.9% in December 2013; whereas, excluding energy, the inflation was stable to 1.0%.

The increase on monthly basis of All items index was mainly due to seasonal factors, which had an impact on the large rise of prices of Fresh vegetables (+4.2% compared with December) and to the monthly price increases of most aggregates of goods and services; only the monthly decrease of prices of Services related to transport (-0.5%) ‒ mainly due to seasonal factors too ‒ had a downward impact.

The annual rate of prices of Goods fell to 0.3% (from +0.4% in December), while the annual rate of prices of Services rose to 1.1% (+1.0% in the previous month). As consequence, the inflationary gap between Services and Goods increased by 0.2 percentage point with respect to December 2013.

In January 2014, according to preliminary estimates, the Italian harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP) decreased by 2.1% compared with the previous month and rose by 0.6% with respect to January 2013 (0.1 lower than in December 2013). The large decrease on monthly basis was mainly due to the winter sales of Clothing and footwear (-22.0%s compared with December 2013), which are not taken into account in the national index NIC.

Core inflation measured by Italian HICP was 1.0%, up from 0.9% in December. Italian HICP, excluding energy, increased by 1.1% with respect to January 2013 (0.2 higher than in December).