Year-on-year inflation in the eurozone fell to 8.6% in January, while that in the European Union slowed to 10.0%, according to data released this Thursday by the official European statistical office.
According to Eurostat, annual inflation of 8.6% in January in the single currency area – slightly above the 8.5% projected in the ‘flash’ estimate published earlier this month – compared to 9.2% in December 2022, which is the third consecutive decline. after 17 months of consecutive increases. A year earlier that was still 5.1%.
In the 27 Member States as a whole, the rate of 10.0% in the first month of the current year is comparable to the inflation rate of 10.4% recorded in December and to the 5.6% of January 2022.
Eurostat notes that the annual inflation rate – measured by the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) – fell in 18 Member States compared to December, while it rose in the remaining nine.
Portugal was one of the countries to register a new decline for the third consecutive month, with the indicator falling to 8.6% – exactly in line with the eurozone average – compared to 9.8% in December last year (in January last year was 3.4%.
The lowest annual inflation rates were recorded in Luxembourg (5.8%), Spain (5.9%), Cyprus and Malta (both 6.8%), while the highest were observed in Hungary (26.2%), Latvia (21.4%) and the Czech Republic (19.1%).
The largest contribution to annual inflation in the eurozone came from the food, alcohol and tobacco sectors (2.94 percentage points – pp), followed by energy (2.17 pp), services (1.80 pp) and industrial goods excluding energy (1.73 pp). p.p.).
Inflation in the Eurozone started accelerating since June 2021, mainly due to the rise in energy prices, reaching record levels since November 2021, peaking at 10.6% in October 2022, with the first pullback recorded last November , followed by further retreats in December and January of this year.
The HICP measures inflation on a comparable basis in all EU countries, so data is presented for these countries as well as for the euro area and the EU as a whole.
Source: DN
