Consumer prices (provisional data) - July 2023

According to preliminary estimates, in July 2023 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 (down from +6.4% in June).

The slow down of the annual inflation rate was mainly due to the prices of Services related to transport (from +4.7% to +2.4%), of Non-regulated energy products (from +8.4% to +7.0%) and, to a lesser extent, of Processed food including alcohol (from +11.5% to +10.9%), of Non energy industrial goods (from +4.8% to +4.6%), of Services miscellaneous (from +2.9% to +2.7%) and of Tobacco (from +2.5% to +1.9%). At the opposite, an upward contribution to the inflation rate came from the prices of Unprocessed food (from +9.4% to +10.4%) and of Services related to housing (from +3.5% to +3.6%).

The core inflation (All-items excluding energy and unprocessed food) was +5.2% (down from +5.6 % in June) and the All-items index excluding energy was +5.6% (from +5.8% in the previous month).

As for Goods, the year on year growth rate was +7.1% (down from +7.5% in June) while for Services the annual rate of change was +4.1% (from +4.5% in the previous month). As a consequence, the negative inflationary gap between Services and Goods remains stable in absolute value (at -3.0 percentage points).

Prices of Grocery and unprocessed food increased by 0.2% on monthly basis and by 10.4% on annual basis (down from +10.5% in the previous month).

The month on month increase of NIC was mainly due to the prices of Processed food including alcohol (+0.9%), of Services related to recreation, including repair and personal care and Services related to transport (+0.4% both), of Non-durable goods and Services miscellaneous (+0.3% both). At the same time, the prices of the following aggregates have decreased: Regulated energy products (-1.5%), Non-regulated energy products (-1.3%), Unprocessed food (-0.8%) and Tobacco (-0.6%).

In July 2023, according to preliminary estimates, the Italian harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) decreased by 1.5% on monthly basis (due to the summer sales not considered by NIC) and increased by 6.4% on annual basis (down from +6.7% in the previous month).