The inflation rate in June fell to 2.8%, resuming the downward trend after a rise in the previous month, announced the National Statistics Institute (INE) this Friday, June 28th.
The underlying inflation rate, which excludes in its calculation energy products and unprocessed food items, such as fruit, vegetables, raw meat and fish, as they are more expensive volatile, fell to 2.3%. In May, this rate, which signals how lasting, or not, the upward trend in prices may be, had stood at 2.7%.
According to INE estimates, the inflation rate for energy products was 9.4%, rising from 7.8% in May. Conversely, the inflation rate for unprocessed food products fell to 2% in June, compared to 2.5% in the previous month.
The previous variations refer to the same period, that is, they reflect the price increases that occurred in June compared to prices in the same month of the previous year. Regarding the evolution of prices from one month to the next, there were no changes: from May to June, the chain inflation rate was zero , when from April to May it was 0.2%.
It is also estimated that the Portuguese Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HIPC), the indicator that allows comparisons between Member States of the European Union, fell to 3.1% in June, when in May had stood at 3.8%. INE justifies this evolution “to a large extent” [com a] reduction in hotel prices, whose acceleration recorded in May was essentially due to a cultural event of a relevant scale that took place in Lisbon”
This is because May’s inflation was marked by a musical epiphenomenon. A more detailed analysis of the data revealed a pronounced increase in accommodation prices from one month to the next, a dynamic that INE itself attributed to the North American Taylor Swift’s concerts in Lisbon.
In May, the inflation rate increased to 3.1%. It was the first increase after two months of declines and the first time since September that it exceeded 3%. INE justified this increase with the “base effect associated with the monthly price reduction recorded in May 2023 (-0.7%), following the VAT exemption on a set of goods food”.
