Consumer prices (provisional data)

According to preliminary estimates, in October 2018 the Italian consumer price index for the whole nation (NIC) was stable on monthly basis and increased by 1.6% with respect to October 2017, up from +1.4% in September 2018.

The acceleration of inflation was mainly due to prices of Regulated energy products (from +5.6% in September to +9.3%) and of Services – miscellaneous (from +0.5% to +2.3%) only partially offset by prices of Unprocessed food and of Services related to transport that slowed their growth respectively from +2.4% to +0.8% and from +2.5% to +1.9%.

Excluding energy and unprocessed food, core inflation was +0.8% (up from +0.7% in September) and inflation excluding energy was +0.9% (as in the previous month).

The increase on monthly basis of All items index was especially due to prices of Regulated energy products (+4.6%) and to a lesser extent to prices of Non-regulated energy products (+1.4%), only partially offset by the decrease of prices of Services related to transport (-2.1%) and of Services related to recreation, including repair and personal care (-0,7%), mainly due to seasonal factors.

The annual rate of change of prices of Goods was +1.9% (up from +1.7% in September) and that one of prices of Services was +1.3% (up from +1.0%). As a consequence, the inflationary gap between Services and Goods was still negative and equal to -0.6 percentage points (from -0.7 in the previous month).

Prices of Grocery and unprocessed food increased by 0.2% on monthly basis and by 1.0% on annual basis (from +1.5% in the previous month).

In October 2018, according to preliminary estimates, the rate of change of Italian harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP) increased by 0.2% with respect to the previous month and by 1.7% with respect to October 2017 (the annual rate of change observed in September was +1.5%).