Consumer prices - September 2022

In September 2022 the rate of change of the Italian consumer price index for the whole nation (NIC) was +0.3% on monthly basis and +8.9% on annual basis (from +8.4% in August), the same as the flash estimate.

The speed-up of the growth on annual basis of all-item index was mainly due to the prices of processed food including alcohol (from +10.4% in August to +11.4%) and unprocessed food (from +9.8% to +11.0%), and of services related to recreation, including repair and personal care (from +4.6% to +5.7%); it is also due to prices of non-durable goods (from +3.8% to +4.6%) and of semi-durable goods (from +2.3% to +2.8%). Quite the opposite, the prices of regulated (from +47.9% to +47.7%) and of non-regulated energy products (from +41.6% to +41.2%) and of services related to transport (from +8.4% to +7.2%) slowed down.

Therefore, core inflation (excluding energy and unprocessed food) was +5.0% (up from +4.4% in the previous month) and inflation excluding energy was +5.5% (up from +5.0% in August).

The annual rate of change of prices of goods was +12.5% (from +11.8% in the previous month) and that of prices of services was +3.9% (from +3.8%). As a consequence, the inflationary gap between services and goods was still negative and equal to -8.6 percentage points (-8.0 percentage points in August).

Prices of grocery and unprocessed food increased by 1.0% on monthly basis and by 10,9% on annual basis (up from +9.6% in the previous month).

The increase on monthly basis of NIC was mainly due to the prices of unprocessed food (+2.0%), of semi-durable goods (+1.0%), of durable goods (+0.7%) and of processed food including alcohol (+0.5%); prices of services related to transport decreased (-4.2%), mostly due to seasonal factors.

In September 2022 the Italian harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) increased by 1.6% on monthly basis, also due to the end of the summer sales of clothing and footwear (not considered by NIC), and by 9.4% on annual basis (from +9.1% in the previous month); the flash estimate was +9.5%.

In the third quarter of 2022, inflation measured by HICP had an impact on households with lower purchasing power (+11.6%) larger than on those with greater spending power (+7.6%).