France’s April final HICP inflation likely confirmed flash reading of -0.1 pct

France’s final HICP inflation for April is expected to confirm the flash estimate of -0.1% y/y, according to Societe Generale. The country’s CPI measure was weakened slightly to -0.2% y/y, mainly due to drop in manufactured products prices.

Going into details, France’s energy prices continued to be soft and remained the same on an annual basis at -6.8% y/y, as compared with -6.9% y/y in March. On a monthly basis it recorded slight gains. Food prices had grown slightly in March. It continued to be stable at 0.4% y/y in April. Amongst core components, services continued to be steady at 0.9% y/y, whereas manufactured products’ prices softened to -0.6% y/y.

“We expect French HICP inflation to average 0.4% in 2016 and 1.7% in 2017. We expect the core metric to be 0.9% in 2016, before rising to 1.3% in 2017”, noted Societe Generale.