The year-on-year inflation rate rose to 3.7% in August, 0.6 percentage points lower than in July, the National Statistics Institute (INE) confirmed today.
The year-on-year rate of change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) released today by INE coincides, rounded to one decimal place, with the value of the flash estimate released on August 31.
According to the statistical institute, “this acceleration is essentially explained by the behavior of fuel prices, which contributed 0.7 percentage points to the increase in the year-on-year change in the CPI”.
In the month under review, the underlying inflation indicator (total index excluding unprocessed food and energy products) registered a change of 4.5%, compared to 4.7% in June.
The change in the index for energy products was -6.5% (-14.9% in the previous month) and the index for unprocessed food slowed to 6.4%, compared to 6.8% in the previous month.
In August, the month-on-month change in the CPI was 0.3% (-0.4% in the previous month and -0.3% in August 2022), while the average change over the last 12 months fell to 6.8%, compared to 7.3% in the year ending in July.
The average change over the last 12 months in the non-housing CPI, the benchmark for updating rents next year, stood at 6.9% (6.94%) in August.
The Portuguese Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) showed a year-on-year rate of change of 5.3%, 1.0 percentage point higher than the previous month and identical to the figure estimated by Eurostat for the euro zone (in July, the Portuguese HICP year-on-year rate of change was 1.0 percentage point lower than that of the euro area).
Excluding unprocessed food and energy products, the HICP in Portugal reached a year-on-year change of 6.4% in August (6.2% in July), higher than the lower rate for the eurozone (estimated at 6.2%).
The data released today by INE also show that the HICP recorded a monthly variation of 0.8% (-0.4% in the previous month and -0.2% in August 2022) and an average variation over the last 12 months of 7.6% (8.0% in the previous month).
