Inflation took a breather again in September and fell four tenths compared to the previous month, standing at 1.8%, the lowest figure since April 2021 and below the European Central Bank’s target of 2%. The evolution of prices thus relaxed, although the president of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, anticipated this Monday in the European Parliament that there will be a “temporary” rise in the last quarter of the year. However, he predicted that the trend will be downward and pointed to a new drop in interest rates in October.
Core inflation, which excludes the prices of energy, food, alcohol and tobacco as they are the most volatile and which serves as a reference for the ECB when establishing its monetary policy, stood at 2.7%, just one tenth below compared to the previous month. The ECB’s objective is for inflation to reach 2% – a rate it hopes to reach in 2026.
Services once again recorded the highest inflation among the components of the shopping basket (4.0%, compared to 4.1% in August). In the case of food, alcohol and tobacco it also fell by one tenth (2.4% compared to 2.3% in August). The decline in energy prices also accelerated to 6.0% (the previous month was 3%).
Belgium (4.55) and Holland (3.3%) are the countries with the highest inflation rates, although in the second case there was a drop of 0.9% compared to the month of August. France is the country in which the difference from one month to the next was most noticeable (with a decrease of 1.2%). In the year-on-year rate, Ireland (0.2%) and Lithuania (0.8%) have the lowest rates.
Source: www.eldiario.es
