July inflation rate falls to 3.1%, 0.3 pp lower than June

The year-on-year inflation rate fell to 3.1% in July, 0.3 percentage points lower than in June, the Portugal’s national statistics institute (INE) confirmed on Thursday.

The year-on-year rate of change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) released today by INE coincides, with rounding to one decimal place, with the figure of the flash estimate released on 31 July.

According to the statistical institute, the deceleration is “partly associated with a decrease in prices in the food and non-alcoholic beverages class”.

In the month under review, the underlying inflation indicator (total index excluding unprocessed food and energy products) registered a change of 4.7%, against 5.3% in June.

The change in the energy index reached -14.9% (-18.8% in the previous month) and the unprocessed food index decelerated to 6.8% from 8.5% in the previous month.

In July, the month-on-month change in the CPI was -0.4% (0.3% in the previous month and nil in July 2022), while the average change over the last 12 months was 7.3%, down from 7.8% in the year ending in June.

The Portuguese Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) showed a year-on-year rate of change of 4.3%, 0.4 percentage points lower than in the previous month and 1.0 percentage points below the value estimated by Eurostat for the euro area (in June, this difference was 0.8 percentage points).

Excluding unprocessed food and energy, the HICP in Portugal reached a year-on-year rate of change of 6.2% in July (6.9% in June), higher than the lower rate for the euro area (estimated at 6.6%).

The data released today by the national statistics institute also show that the HICP registered a monthly rate of change of -0.4% (0.4% in the previous month and nil in July 2022) and an average rate of change of 8.0% in the last 12 months (against 8.4% in the previous month).