Consumer prices

Starting from the data of January 2016, the Italian consumer price index for the whole nation (NIC), the Italian consumer price index for blue and white-collar worker households (FOI) and the Italian harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP) are compiled on the reference base 2015=100 (the previous one was 2010 for NIC and FOI and 2005 for HICP).

In January 2016, NIC – all items declined by 0.2% compared with the previous month and rose by 0.3 with respect to January 2015, up from 0.1 in December 2015. The flash estimate was confirmed.

The speed up of the inflation was mainly due to the reduction of the annual decrease of prices of both Non-regulated energy products (-5.9% from -8.7% in December 2015) and of the reversal trend of prices of Services related to transport (+0.5%, from -1.7% in December 2015). These dynamics were partially offset by the slowdown of the annual growth of prices of Unprocessed food (+0.6%, from +2.3% in the previous month).

Excluding energy and unprocessed food, core inflation was 0.8%, up from 0.6 registered in December 2015; also excluding energy, the inflation was 0.8 (0.1 percentage points higher than that of the previous month).

The decrease on monthly basis of NIC – all items was mainly due to the decline of prices of Energy products (-2.4%).

The annual rate of change of prices of Goods was -0.1 (the same rate observed in December 2015) and the annual rate of change of prices of Services was +0.7% (up from +0.3% in the previous month). As consequence, the inflationary gap between Services and Goods increased by 0.4 percentage points with respect to December 2015.

Prices of Grocery and unprocessed food decreased by 0.2% on monthly basis and rose by 0.3% on annual basis (down from 0.9% in the previous month).

In January 2016 the HICP – all items decreased by 2.2% compared with the previous month and rose by 0.4% with respect to January 2015 (up from +0.1% registered in December 2015). The flash estimate was confirmed.

The large decrease on monthly basis was mainly due to the winter sales of Clothing and footwear (-22.3% compared with December 2015), which are not taken into account in the national index NIC.

Core inflation measured by Italian HICP was 0.9%, up from 0.6% in December 2015; the inflation increased by 0.9 also excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco (up from 0.5 in the previous month) and excluding energy (0.2 percentage points higher than in December 2015).

In January 2016, the Italian harmonized index of consumer prices at constant tax rates (HICP-CT) declined by 2.2% compared with December 2015 and rose by 0.4% with respect to January 2015 (the same rate of change of HICP). Therefore, as in the previous two months, the difference between HICP and HICP-CT growth rates – which incorporates the effects of changes in indirect taxes occurred in the last twelve months – was zero: it has be noted that this difference represents the upper limit of the impact of changes in indirect taxes occurred in the last twelve months on HICP, assuming their full and instantaneous pass-through on prices paid by consumers.

Date of next release: 29 February 2016

Note. On 24 February at 8.00 a.m., the full text was replaced because Table 4 together with Table 2 and Figure 1 of the Methodological note were changed, updating the comment.