German headline inflation accelerates slightly year-on-year in February on rise in energy prices

German consumer price inflation accelerated a bit in February. On a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation came in at 1.5 percent, slightly higher than January’s print of 1.4 percent. On a sequential basis, the consumer price index rose 0.4 percent, showed the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).

On a year-on-year basis, energy prices rose 2.9 percent in February, having a slight upward impact on the overall inflation rate. Prices of electricity, gas and other fuels rose 4.3 percent year-on-year. The highest price rise was seen in heating oil that recorded a rise of 14.2 percent. Stripping energy prices, the pace of inflation came in at 1.4 percent year-on-year in the month. Meanwhile, food prices accelerated to 1.4 percent year-on-year. Vegetable prices rose 12.2 percent.

Compared with the overall inflation rate, the prices of goods as a whole indicated an above-average increase of 1.7 percent year-on-year. Moreover, significant year-on-year price rises were also seen for other goods, especially newspaper and periodicals and tobacco products.

Meanwhile, services inflation came in at 1.4 percent year-on-year. The increase in net rents exclusive of heating expenses mainly drove the rise in services inflation, as households spend a large part of their consumption expenditure on this item.

Sequentially, consumer price index rose 0.4 percent in February. Package holiday prices rose noticeably in the month by 10.7 percent. Clothing, plants and flowers also recorded higher prices. Food prices rose 0.5 percent, mainly due to the 3.6 percent rise in vegetable prices. Energy prices rose just 0.2 percent sequentially in February. A sequential rise of 1.1 percent was seen in heating oil.

The harmonized index of consumer prices for Germany rose 1.7 percent year-on-year, whereas the index rose markedly by 0.5 percent on a sequential basis.

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