Inflation confirms its upward trend in March. According to data released by the National Institute of Statistics (INS), the inflation rate reached 7.2% last month from 7% in February and 6.7% in January, its highest level since March 2019.
This increase is mainly explained by the acceleration in the pace of price increases for alcoholic beverages and tobacco (+21% compared to +19.4% in February) as well as prices in the clothing and footwear group (+9.8% compared to +8.9%) and prices in the furniture, household goods and routine household maintenance group (+6.1% compared to +5.7%).
In detail, food prices rose by 8.7% year-on-year. This increase comes mainly from the rise in prices of eggs by 22.2%, olive oil by 20.6%, fresh fruit by 18.9%, poultry prices by 14.1%, milk and cheese by 8.8%, fresh fish by 8.6% and grain derivatives by 7%. On the other hand, dried fruit prices are down 4.3% year-on-year.
As for the prices of manufactured goods, they went up 8.4% due to the increase in prices of pharmaceutical products by 4.1%, building materials by 11.2%, clothing products by 9.8% and common household maintenance products by 5.9%.
For services, prices are up 4.7% year-on-year, explained by price hikes in restaurants, cafes and hotels services by 7.1%, health services by 4.1% and rents by 4.4%.
Meanwhile, the core inflation rate (excluding food and energy) rose to 6.8 percent in March from 6.6 percent the previous month. Prices for free goods (unregulated) rose 7.4%.
Prices of regulated products increased by 6.6%. Free food products rose 9.7% versus 3.6% for regulated food products.
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