Consumer prices

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), confirming the flash estimate.

The acceleration of inflation was mainly due to prices of Regulated energy products (from +5.6% in September to +10.7%) and of Services – miscellaneous (from +0.5% to +2.3% due to the end of the wide decrease on annual basis of prices of Education that started in October 2017 with the sharp reduction of those of the University education), 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 +1.8%.

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

The zero variation on monthly basis of All items index was due to prices of Regulated energy products (+5.8%) and to a lesser extent to prices of Non-regulated energy products (+1.4%), whose increase was 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 +1.8% (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 -0.5 percentage points (from -0.7 in the previous month).

Prices of Grocery and unprocessed food decreased by 0.1% on monthly basis and increased by 0.7% on annual basis (from +1.5% in the previous month).

In October 2018, 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%), confirming the flash estimate.