Prices continued to

rise

in Europe in the last month of the year, bringing

average inflation in the Eurozone to 5%,

from 4.9% in November, according to advance data published this Friday by the community statistical office.

Eurostat

.

If this data is confirmed,

average inflation will have remained at 2.6%

in 2021, six tenths above the objective of 2% that marks the stability of prices according to the

European Central Bank (ECB)

, but below the average in Spain, which stood at 2.78% after the CPI shot up to 6.7% in December.

This led our country to be the one with the highest price increases among developed countries, as El Mundo reports today.

By components,

energy

was the one that increased the most in December, 26%;

followed by food, alcohol and tobacco (+ 3.2%), non-energy industrial goods (+ 2.9%) and services (+ 2.4%).

Core

inflation

- excluding energy products or fresh food - stood at

2.7% in December.

Once the December data are known, experts such as the economists of the British consultancy

Capital Economics

believe that

the peak has been reached in December

, but they see it difficult for core inflation - the most important for the ECB - to fall below 2% on average in the year 2022.

"We suspect that December was the peak of inflation in the euro zone (...). However,

we believe that core inflation will average around 2%,

with no clear signs of a downward trend. Inflation of input prices is still extremely high and this will take time to turn into non-energy industrial goods inflation. And while

we do not expect an increase in wages to trigger an acceleration in

services inflation, if demand recovers quickly after restrictions are lifted and consumers become less cautious, experience suggests that

the labor shortage could intensify

, "they point out.

Rate hikes in 2023?

As a result, they believe there is a

"growing likelihood

that by the end of the year the ECB will start preparing the ground for modest

interest rate increases in 2023."

Bert Colijn

, senior economist for the Eurozone at

ING

, agrees that

core inflation will be above 2%

at least in the first half of 2022, although he is not so sure that the inflation peak has been reached.

"It largely depends on the

evolution of gas prices

, which have been incredibly volatile in recent weeks and a dominant factor in the recent surge in inflation. Still, given the current futures prices for natural gas and oil , energy inflation is likely to have peaked and a downward trend set in from here. On top of that, the effect of the German VAT, which raised inflation during the last month in December, will reduce by around 0.5 % general inflation from January, "he says.

In his view, given that no second-round effects on wages have yet occurred, "

the ECB still has time to see how quickly current supply-side inflation declines

throughout the year before making a decision. on new shares ".

The inflation data for this Friday has been known after the minutes of the last meeting of the United States Federal Reserve

(the Fed, its central bank)

came to light on Wednesday , in which they already collected that they saw

"justified "anticipating the rise in interest rates

due to high inflation, which has triggered falls in the stock markets.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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