2023-08-11 21:00:11
The islanders will barely notice the drop in the annual rate of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) that has been registered in the last month in the Canary Islands, and this, despite the fact that it is the only autonomous community where all prices have fallen. The reason for the little impact on the pockets is that the moderation of the growth of the CPI in the Islands has been barely three tenths: it went from 3.9% in the month of June to 3.6% in July. The data offered yesterday by the National Institute of Statistics also reflected that the monthly variation in prices was only 0.1% less and was motivated by the strong decrease suffered by clothing and footwear in July, of 13.2%.
As to core inflationwhich is the one that excludes the prices of energy products and unprocessed food, remained stable in the Canary Islands in the last month with 6.2%contrary to what happened in the country as a whole, where it increased from 5.9% to 6.2% after two months of decline.
While the general drop in prices compared to June has been practically imperceptible, the canaries have seen a more palpable rise in what affects them the most, the cost of food, which grew by 0.7% in July. This data again converted to Canarias, one more month, in the community where the price of the shopping basket rose the most. In addition, leisure and culture (+2.2%) as well as hotels, cafeterias and restaurants (+0.7%) also registered significant increases in prices last month.
Everything more expensive than a year ago
The decline in the CPI in July in the Archipelago is not something to poke at, especially if one analyzes how prices were last year. If the data is compared with that of the same month of 2022, the CPI for the Canary Islands grew by 3.6%. In this way, the Archipelago followed the upward trend in prices of all the autonomous communities, although it suffered the most intense one and only the autonomous cities of Ceuta (4.3%) and Melilla (4.1%) exceeded its figure. .
Everything is more expensive than twelve months ago in the Canary Islands: food has risen 13.1%followed by hotels, cafes and restaurants (+7.7%), alcoholic beverages and tobacco (+6.5%) and leisure and culture (+5.4).
What is most worrying in the Islands is the shopping basket, precisely because of that 13.1% increase that places it as the one that has risen the most in the country and distances it from the national average of 9.7% increase. Thus, there are already twelve months in which the CPI has consecutively made the Canaries the hardest hit in Spain when they go to establishments to fill their home furniture with basic products and non-alcoholic beverages.
Regarding alcohol and tobacco, prices fell by barely 0.1% in the month of July. However, these products have become 6.5% more expensive in the Islands in the last year. Even so, the Canary Islands is among the communities where prices have risen the least together with Galicia (6.5%) and Asturias (6.4%).
It was also more expensive during the month of July –0.7%– to take a trip to the hotels on the Islands, have a sandwich in their cafeterias or dine in their restaurants. These types of activities have undergone different variations, with ups and downs, in recent months, although the general trend is upwards since in the last year the prices of these establishments have experienced a rise of 7.7%.
Other prices that increased were those related to leisure and culture. In July, the action of buying movie tickets –something so frequent just the month of the premiere of the box office hits Barbie and Oppenheimer– cost the canaries 2.2% more than in the previous month. The rise in June is the highest registered in the last 12 months in the Islands, with a percentage increase of 5.4%.
As for the decreases in prices, the most important have been suffered by clothing and footwear, which have registered a considerable decrease of 13.2% in the Islands, the largest in all of Spain, since the country registered an average drop of 9.7%. It has been precisely the sales of these articles that have made up the CPI for July and have made it drop in the Canary Islands.
what too the price of housing has decreased but only 0.1% in the last month. Although if we look at the annual figures, the prices of these infrastructures have fallen by 11.2% in the Archipelago compared to 2022.
The price of transport for personal use, for its part, was reduced by 0.2% in July in the Islands. Thus, in one year the price of private mobility has fallen by 3.1% for the Canaries. At a national level, these transports increased their cost by 0.6%.
The CEOE rules out reaching the ECB’s inflation target for the Islands
The Confederation of Employers of Tenerife (CEOE) stated yesterday – after knowing the CPI data – that, despite the reduction registered in the Canary Islands in July, there will be an upward impact on prices due to the increase in wages and the cost of fuels, so businessmen see it as probable that the inflation targets will not be reached.
The president of the Tenerife employers’ association, Pedro Alfonso, highlighted the fact that, although there has been a rebound in the CPI in the country as a whole, the Canary Islands have chained another month on their path of decline. Thus, the national average increased from 1.9% in June to 2.3%, while the figure for the Canary Islands went from 3.9% to 3.6%.
For the CEOE of Tenerife, the reduction in the CPI in the Canary Islands is due, among other reasons, to the fall in energy prices and raw materials, as well as “to the relief of the bottlenecks generated in the industry” last year.
Afonso added that the changing prices of energy products in 2022 caused a very pronounced volatility in the general rate “which prevents us from clearly seeing the real trend of inflation; so it’s better to focus attention on the underlying rate, which is where the former will converge anyway.”
For this reason, the CEOE insists on continuing to monitor the economy “with one eye on the day-to-day and the other on the medium-term forecasts” since it is not “so clear” that the situation will continue over time, especially because the economy of tourist-sending countries is in a “complicated” situation. If this situation continues, the Archipelago could have “some problem” related to tourist reservations for the next season.
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