Consumer prices (provisional data) - April 2022

According to preliminary estimates, in April 2022 the rate of change of the Italian consumer price index for the whole nation (NIC) was +0.2% on monthly basis and +6.2% on annual basis (from +6.5% in March).

The slowdown on annual basis of All-item index was mainly due to the prices of Energy (from +50.9% to +42.4%), specifically to those of both Regulated (from +94.6% to +71.4%) and Non-regulated energy products (from +36.4% to +31.7%). Also prices of Services related to recreation, including repair and personal care, slightly slowed down (from +3.3% to +2.4%). Quite the opposite, prices of Services related to transport (from +1.0% to +5.1%), of Processed food including alcohol (from +3.9% to +5.4%), of Durable goods (from +1.6% to +2.2%) and of Non-durable goods (from +1.3% to +2.1%) sped up.

Therefore, core inflation (excluding energy and unprocessed food) was +2.5% (up from +1.9% in the previous month) and inflation excluding energy was +2.9% (up from +2.5% in March).

The annual rate of change of prices of Goods was +9.2% (from +9.8% in the previous month) and that of prices of Services was +2.1% (from +1.8%). As a consequence, the inflationary gap between Services and Goods was still negative and equal to -7.1 percentage points (from -8.0 in March).

Prices of Grocery and unprocessed food increased by 1.5% on monthly basis and by 6.0% on annual basis (up from +5.0% in the previous month).

The increase on monthly basis of NIC was mainly due to the prices of Services related to transport (+2.8%), of Processed food including alcohol (+2.0%) and of Unprocessed food (+0.8%), partially offset by the decrease of the prices of Regulated energy products (-8.8%) and Non-regulated energy products (-2.5%).

In April 2022, according to preliminary estimates, the Italian harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) increased by 0.6% on monthly basis and by 6.6% on annual basis (from +6.8% in March). The different monthly dynamics between HICP and NIC was due to the end of the winter sales (prices of Clothing and footwear increased by 5.4% on monthly basis), that partly went on in March and that NIC does not consider.