According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), Portugal's inflation rate slowed down to 7.4% in March, compared to 8.2% in February. The decline is partly
attributed to the base effect resulting from the increase in fuel and food prices observed in March 2022. The underlying inflation indicator, which excludes unprocessed food products and energy, decreased to 7.0% from the previous month's 8.2%.
The index for energy products fell to -4.4%, the first negative value since February 2021, while the index for unprocessed food products decelerated to 19.3% from the previous month's 20.1%. In contrast, the monthly variation of the CPI increased to 1.7% in March, compared to 0.3% in the previous month and 2.5% in March 2022. The average change in the last twelve months was 8.7%, slightly higher than February's 8.6%.
Moreover, Portugal's Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) recorded a year-on-year change of 8.0%, which is 0.6 p.p. higher than the previous month's figure. This value is also 1.1 p.p. higher than the value estimated by Eurostat for the Euro area. Excluding unprocessed food and energy products, the HICP reached a year-on-year change of 8.1% in March, higher than the corresponding rate for the Euro area, which is estimated at 7.5%. The HICP recorded a monthly variation of 2.0%, an increase from the previous month's 0.4% and March 2022's 2.6%. The average variation of the last twelve months was 9.1%, up from the previous month's 8.9%. Photo by Pacopac, Wikimedia commons.