Consumer prices - May 2022

In May 2022 the rate of change of the Italian consumer price index for the whole nation (NIC) was +0.8% on monthly basis and +6.8% on annual basis (from +6.0% in April); the flash estimate was +6.9%.

The speed-up of the growth on annual basis of All-item index was due to the prices of several types of products and in particular to those of Energy (from +39.5% to +42.6%), specifically of Non-regulated energy products (from +29.8 % to +32.9%; Regulated energy products confirmed the same wide increase of the previous month, equal to +64.3%), of Food including alcohol (from +6.1% to +7.1%), in particular of Processed food (from +5.0% to +6.6%), of Services related to recreation, including repair and personal care (from +2.4% to +4.4%) and of Services related to transport (from +5.1% to +6.0%).

Therefore, core inflation (excluding energy and unprocessed food) was +3.2% (up from +2.4% in the previous month) and inflation excluding energy was +3.6% (up from +2.9% in April).

The annual rate of change of prices of Goods was +9.7% (from +8.7% in the previous month) and that of prices of Services was +3.1% (from +2.1%). As a consequence, the inflationary gap between Services and Goods was stable and still negative (-6.6 percentage points as in April).

Prices of Grocery and unprocessed food increased by 1.2% on monthly basis and by 6.7% on annual basis (up from +5.7% in the previous month).

The increase on monthly basis of NIC was mainly due to the prices of Non-regulated energy products (+3.6%), of Processed food including alcohol (+1.3%), of Services related to recreation, including repair and personal care (+1.2%) and of Unprocessed food (+1.1%).

In May 2022, according to preliminary estimates, the Italian harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) increased by 0.9% on monthly basis and by 7.3% on annual basis (from +6.3% in April), confirming the flash estimate.