2023-09-28 09:22:13
An increase in prices was expected at the gates of autumn, but in the end it has been a boost. The take-off of electricity and fuel has been the main trigger for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for September to have increased by 0.2% in September in relation to the previous month, but its interannual rate has taken off by nine tenths. up to 3.5%, its highest value since June 2022, according to advanced data published this Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
With this advance in September, inflation has three consecutive months of increases, after rising four and three tenths in July and August, it once again exceeds 3% after three months below this level and is at its highest level since last April, when it reached 4.1%. This change in upward trend suggests that it will remain this way for the coming months, in line with the forecasts already set by organizations such as the Bank of Spain or Airef, which place the general CPI at around 5% at the end of the year. However, despite the fact that the interannual rate has increased by almost one percentage point, the monthly increase has been contained to two tenths, the second lowest since February and three tenths less than a month ago.
These two tenths are explained by the “step effect” produced during the summer months – when the CPI fell to 1.9% – and which occurs when prices grow a lot in a short period of time, to later decrease, as happened last year with electricity after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Now, the price of electricity is still far from its historical highs, but it falls less than last year, which puts upward pressure on the CPI. Therefore, Statistics justifies the rise in the CPI due to the rise in electricity prices, “compared to the decrease they experienced a year before, and, to a lesser extent, the rise in fuel prices, in contrast to the price reduction they registered in September 2022”.
This has allowed at least core inflation – which does not account for unprocessed food or energy products – to maintain its downward trend and fall another three tenths, to 5.8%, a rate 2.3 points higher than that of the general CPI and the lowest since June 2022, when it stood at 5.5%.
With these, in the month of September the estimated annual variation rate of the harmonized consumer price index (HICP) stood at 3.2%, eight tenths above that registered the previous month. The estimated monthly variation of the IPCA was 0.6%.
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