Consumer prices

In April 2022 the rate of change of the Italian consumer price index for the whole nation (NIC) was -0.1% on monthly basis and +6.0% on annual basis (from +6.5% in March); the flash estimate was +6.2%.

The slowdown on annual basis of all-item index was mainly due to the prices of energy (from +50.9% in March to +39.5%), of both regulated energy products (from +94.6% to +64.3%) and non-regulated energy products (from +36.4% to 29.8%). Also prices of services related to recreation, including repair and personal care slowed down (from +3.3% to +2.4%). Quite the opposite, the prices of services related to transport (from +1.0% to +5.1%), of processed food including alcohol (from +3.9 to +5.0%), of durable goods (from +1.6% to +2.2%) and those of non-durable goods (from +1.3% to +1.9%) sped up.

Therefore, core inflation (excluding energy and unprocessed food) was +2.4% (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 +8.7% (from +9.8% in the previous month) and that of prices of services was +2.1% (from +1.8% in March). As a consequence, the inflationary gap between services and goods was still negative and equal to -6.6 percentage points (from -8.0 in March).

Prices of grocery and unprocessed food increased by 1.3% on monthly basis and by 5.7% on annual basis (up from +5.0% in the previous month).

The slight decrease on monthly basis was mainly due to the prices of regulated energy products (-12.5%) and, to a lesser extent, to those of non-regulated energy products (-3.9%), partially offset by the increase of prices of Services related to transport (+2.8%), of processed food including alcohol (+1.6%), of unprocessed food (+0.8%) and of non-durable goods (+0.6%).

In April 2022 the rate of change of the Italian harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP) was +0.4% on monthly basis and +6.3% on annual basis (from +6.8% in March); the flash estimate was +6.6%. The different monthly dynamics between HICP and NIC was due to the end of the winter sales (prices of clothing and footwear increased by 5.5% on the previous month), that partly went on in March and that NIC does not consider.