The Italian harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) increased by 0.2 per cent in August on a monthly basis and by 5.5 per cent on an annual basis (down from +6.3 per cent in the previous month), confirming the flash estimate.

The slowdown of the growth of HICP was due to the summer sales, which caused a decrease on monthly basis of prices of clothing and footwear (minus 3.2 per cent) larger than that of August 2022 (minus 0.7 per cent).

This difference reflects on the rate of change on annual basis of prices of clothing and footwear—from 5.4 per cent in July to 2.7 per cent—and on that of the all item index, the Italian National Institute of Statistics said in a release.

The core inflation—all-items excluding energy and unprocessed food—was 4.8 per cent, down from 5.2 per cent in July; the all-items index excluding energy was 5 per cent, down from 5.5 per cent in the previous month.

The year-on-year (YoY) growth rate for goods was 6.3 per cent in August, down from 7 per cent in July.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)