Inflation Up to 3.8 percent in August, Highest Figure in Past Nine Years
Bratislava, September 14 (TASR) – Prices continued to rise in August, with year-on-year (y-o-y) inflation reaching as high as 3.8 percent, the Statistics Office reported on Tuesday. This is the highest figure to be reported since October 2012, i.e. for almost nine years.
Inflation was driven by higher prices in transport, imputed rentals influenced by the prices of construction materials and rapidly growing food prices.
While housing and energy prices dampened price growth at the beginning of the year, they’ve been more likely to boost it in the second half of the year. Increases in prices of construction materials have already outdone the effect of a drop in energy prices from the beginning of the year. “This was supplemented by more expensive fuels, with prices reporting growth of over 20 percent for the fourth consecutive month,” said the Statistics Office.
On a monthly basis, the increase in consumer prices amounted to 0.4 percent in August, but the rate of growth decelerated and was the lowest in four months.
Monthly growth resulted from the following increases: in furniture, household equipment and ordinary maintenance (up 1.1 percent), transport (1 percent), miscellaneous goods and services (0.8 percent), and imputed rentals (1.6 percent).
Conversely, monthly growth was dampened by the prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages (down 0.1 percent).
All segments posted y-o-y price rises in August, with housing going up by 2.2 percent. The prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages grew by 3.7 percent, while those in transport were 11.1 percent higher than the year before. Nevertheless, the most rapid growth was again seen in fuel prices (up 22.1 percent) in August. Following a tax hike, tobacco prices grew for the sixth consecutive month, going up by 16.5 percent y-o-y in August. Y-o-y inflation was also driven by higher prices in furniture and household equipment (6.8 percent), in newspapers, books and office supplies (6.6 percent) and in tourism (4.9 percent).
When individual groups of the public are taken into account, consumer prices increased by 3.8 percent y-o-y for households of employed people and by 3.6 percent for low-income households. The figure for pensioner households rose by 3.9 percent.
In the first eight months of 2021, meanwhile, consumer prices rose by 2.1 percent when compared to the same period of last year.
