INE delivers its ‘flash estimate’; definitive date to come on August 10
According to statistics institute INE, Portugal’s rate of inflation slowed to 3.1% in July, “partly associated with a decrease in prices in the food and non-alcoholic beverages class”.
This is the habitual ‘flash estimate’ published by INE at the start of each month, to be followed up by confirmation (or otherwise) roughly 10 days later.
Says today’s report, the year-on-year rate of change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell to 3.1% in July, 0.3 percentage points less than in June.
As for the underlying inflation indicator (total index excluding unprocessed food and energy products), it will have registered a change of 4.7% in the month under review (vis-a-vis 5.3% in June).
INE adds that the change in the index for energy products “will have stood at -15.0% (-18.8% in the previous month)” and that the index for unprocessed food products “will have decelerated to 6.9% (when it was 8.5% in June)”.
The average rate of change in the last 12 months was 7.3% (against 7.8% recorded in the year ending in June).
The Portuguese Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is estimated to have registered a year-on-year rate of change of 4.3% in July, compared to 4.7% in the previous month.
As for growth, Portugal’s gross domestic product stagnated in the second quarter relative to the first, with GDP up 2.3% compared to the same period last year.
In the first quarter, the year-on-year increase in GDP had been 2.5%, INE recalls.
The entity, also known as Statistics Portugal, explains that “the positive contribution of net external demand to the year-on-year change in GDP was lower than in the previous quarter, with a more marked deceleration in exports of goods and services than in imports of goods and services.”
The institute also stressed that in relation to the first quarter of the year, the rate of change of GDP was zero.
Source: Lusa
