Italy’s consumer price inflation drops sequentially in November, but rises in year-on-year terms

Italy’s consumer price index dropped on a sequential basis and rose on a year-on-year basis in November. The preliminary estimates show that Italy’s inflation fell 0.1 percent sequentially in November and rose 0.1 percent year-on-year from -0.2 percent in October 2016.

The reversal trend of the all items index was predominantly because of the Services prices. Rebound in prices of services related to recreation was seen. Within goods, positive contribution to inflation was seen from the reversals trend of prices of Non-regulated energy products and of unprocessed food, countered by the deceleration of durable goods prices.

The annual pace of change of prices of goods came in at -0.4 percent and the annual rate of change of prices of services came at 0.6 percent, up from 0.1 percent in the prior month. Thus the inflationary gap between services and goods doubled, rising by 0.5 percentage points with respect to October 2016, noted Istat.

Core inflation, excluding unprocessed food and energy, rose 0.4 percent in November, up from 0.2 percent in October. Similarly, excluding energy, inflation accelerated to 0.4 percent, from 0.2 percent in October.

The preliminary estimates showed that the pace of change of Italy’s harmonized index of consumer prices dropped 0.2 percent, with respect to the earlier month and rose 0.1 percent year-on-year. Core inflation gauged by HICP and inflation excluding energy came in at 0.5 percent, up from 0.2 percent in October. Inflation excluding food, energy, tobacco and alcohol rose to 0.4 percent from 0.2 percent.