There are things in Germany that have a nice regularity.

This includes the inflation rate being published at the end of each month – at least the first estimate that the Federal Statistical Office always makes at this point in time.

In Germany, this number regularly attracts more attention than in other countries because Germans, presumably for historical reasons, are particularly sensitive to all signs of inflation.

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in Business.

  • Follow I follow

Since the rate even went into double digits at times last year, it has only gotten worse.

It was all the more remarkable what the Federal Statistical Office announced on Monday: the publication of the January inflation rate, which was actually planned for Tuesday, was cancelled.

To be more precise: postponed to the coming week.

This is also unusual because the inflation rate for the euro zone as a whole, on which nothing less than the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB) is based, is based on the rates of the individual euro countries.

The European statistics agency Eurostat had actually planned to publish the eurozone inflation composed of these individual values ​​on Wednesday;

exactly one day before the ECB Governing Council, the top monetary policy body in the euro area, meets for its January meeting and plans to raise interest rates to combat inflation.

Eurostat obviously didn't want to simply postpone the publication of euro zone inflation.

On request, a spokeswoman for the authorities in Luxembourg said that the planned publication date of Wednesday, February 1st would be maintained.

If the Germans don't provide their figures, an estimate will be used for Germany.

The German rate is then simply not quantified in the publications.

At least that doesn't happen every day.

That's why it's interesting: what's behind it?

Is there a deeper reason why Germany's inflation rate should not be revealed - or is it just a glitch?

A statement from the Federal Statistical Office states that the publication has been postponed due to "technical problems" - to the sixth calendar week from February 6th to 10th.

The exact release date will be announced on February 3rd.

What exactly is behind the difficulties?

One hears from the authority that there are IT difficulties: The problems are purely technical.

So there is no contextual background.

A change should be made in January.

The consumer price index for Germany is revised at regular intervals and converted to a new base year.

With the results for the reporting month of January 2023, the conversion from the previous base year 2015 to the base year 2020 should take place.

The results would be recalculated from January 2020.

At the same time, the results calculated on the basis of 2015 would be revised.

Due to this revision, a new so-called IT specialist procedure had to be run - and that caused difficulties.

"Despite extensive tests, our program is stuck, the collected data is not processed," said the Federal Statistical Office.

This is a very unfavorable time for a technical breakdown, but unfortunately cannot be prevented.

The rebasing is therefore not the reason for the difficulties, only program adjustments are being made at this point in time.

Here it is exclusively due to the programming work.

Inflation rate is likely to have risen again

Several state statistical offices had previously postponed the announcement.

The nationwide estimate is based on their results.

The question remains: How high was inflation in Germany in January?

In December, the rate was 8.6 percent.

That was less than in November, mainly due to the government taking over the December gas discount for households.

The statisticians had decided to include that to a significant extent in calculating the inflation rate.

Accordingly, the inflation rate is likely to have risen again in January.

In a Reuters survey of economists, the average estimate was 9.2 percent.

We will know more precisely in the coming week.