Tourism helped halt inflation. Tolls will only increase by 0.9%

The National Statistics Office (INE) confirmed this Tuesday that the inflation slowed down to 1% in October, a 0.4 percentage points reduction in comparison to the previous month. The hospitality and restaurant sectors have been the reason behind the deceleration with its inflation rate standing at -0.6% in October.

“In 2018, the annual rate of change in the sector ‘restaurants and hotels’ has shown many irregularities as a consequence of the behaviour of some major groups in the segment of accommodation. Inflation was registering a very high year-on-year change in May, July and September, but quite low in August and October”, INE shows. However, the report also showed that the “average variation from January to October 2018 in the CPI in the accommodation services group was still very high (7.4%), although it was still below the yearly price variation (11.8%)”.

The break in prices was not witnessed only in the activities connected with tourism. The year on year variation of CPI was also negative for non-transformed food items (-0.1%) and for leisure, recreation and culture activities (-0.5%). On the other hand, there was a year-on-year CPI increase in the alcoholic beverages and tobacco segment (3.2%) and for diverse services and goods (0.9%).

The highest increase was registered in energy products, which registered a year on year increase in the CPI of 7.3%.

Tolls charges increase, but at a relatively lower rate

Inflation in October is also a reference point for the toll charges increase. And as such, according to the inflation index, the toll operators will probably propose to the government an update of tolls of about 0.89%, which is relatively low the initial INE estimates, of increasing prices by 0.98%.

The new toll charges proposals from the highway operators must be delivered to the government on the 15th of November at the latest. The new charges will come into effect on the 1st of January 2019.