Consumer prices (provisional data) - August 2023

According to preliminary estimates, in August 2023 the rate of change of the Italian consumer price index for the whole nation (NIC) was +0.4% on monthly basis and +5.5% on annual basis (from +5.9% in July).

The slow down of the annual inflation rate was due to the prices of Non-regulated energy products (from +7.0% to +5.7%), of Services related to recreation, including repair and personal care (from +6.6% to +5.9%), of Unprocessed food (from +10.4% to +9.2%), of Services related to transport (from +2.4% to +1.2%), of Durable goods (from +5.4% to +4.6%) and, to a lesser extent, of Processed food including alcohol (from +10.5% to +10.1%). At the opposite, an upward contribution to the inflation rate came from the prices of Services related to housing (from +3.6% to +4.0%) and of Regulated energy products (from -30.3% to -29.0%).

The core inflation (All-items excluding energy and unprocessed food) was +4.8% (down from +5.2 % in July) and the All-items index excluding energy was +5.1% (from +5.5% in the previous month).

As for Goods, the year on year growth rate was +6.4% (down from +7.0% in July) while for Services the annual rate of change was +3.6% (from +4.1%). As a consequence, the negative inflationary gap between Services and Goods decreases in absolute value (from -2.9 percentage points in July to -2.8).

Prices of Grocery and unprocessed food increased by 0.3% on monthly basis and by 9.6% on annual basis (down from +10.2% in the previous month).

The month on month increase of NIC was mainly due to the prices of Regulated energy products (+2.0%), of Non-regulated energy products (+1.7%), of Services related to transport (+1.2%), of Processed food including alcohol (+0.8%), of Durable goods and Services related to housing (+0.4% both). At the same time, the prices of Unprocessed food have decreased (-0.5%).

In August 2023, according to preliminary estimates, the Italian harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) increased by 0.2% on monthly basis and by 5.5% on annual basis (down from +6.3% in the previous month). The slow down of the growth of HICP (wider than NIC) was due to the summer sales (not considered by NIC), which caused a decrease on monthly basis of prices of Clothing and footwear (-3.1%) larger than that of August 2022 (-0.7%); this difference reflects on the rate of change on annual basis of prices of Clothing and footwear (from +5.4% in July to +2.8%) and on that of the all item index.