Consumer prices (provisional)

According to preliminary estimates, in July 2019 the Italian consumer price index for the whole nation (NIC) increased by 0.1% on monthly basis and by 0.5% with respect to July 2018 (down from +0.7%).

The slowdown of the growth on annual basis of all items index was essentially due to the trend reversal of prices of regulated energy products (from +4.3% to -3.1%), that was only slightly offset by the speed-up of prices of unprocessed food (from +0.7% to +1.6%) and services related to transport (from +1.5% to +1.8%).

The core inflation excluding energy and unprocessed food was +0.5% (up from +0.4% in June 2019) and inflation excluding energy was +0.6% (up from +0.5%).

The increase on monthly basis of all items index was especially due to prices of services related to recreation, including repair and personal care and of services related to transport (+0.7% for both), affected by seasonal factors, only partially offset by the decrease of those of regulated energy products (-1.5%), of unprocessed food and of non-regulated energy products (-0.8% for both).

The annual rate of change of prices of goods was +0.1% (down from +0.5% in the previous month) and that one of prices of services was +1.0% (the same as in June 2019). As a consequence, the inflationary gap between services and goods was +0.9 percentage points (0.5 in the previous month).

Prices of grocery and unprocessed food registered a zero variation on monthly basis and increased by 0.8% on annual basis (up from +0.2% in the previous month).

In July 2019, according to preliminary estimates, the Italian harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP) decreased by 1.7% compared with the previous month and increased by 0.4% with respect to July 2018 (from +0.8% in June). The decrease on monthly basis was mainly due to the beginning of the summer sales of clothing and footwear (-20.6% compared with June 2019), which are not taken into account in the national index NIC.