2023-05-02 16:47:51
Nobody will realize it while shopping, the rise in food prices, which is currently close to 14% in the euro zone, continuing to wreak havoc. However, in recent months, inflation has begun to decline. In April, in the euro zone, it reached 7% over one year, according to data published Tuesday, May 2 by the European statistics agency Eurostat. This is marginally more than in March (6.9%) but now far from the inflation peak of 10.1% in November.
“It’s the beginning of the beginning of the reflux, but it remains tenuous”, warns Gilles Moëc, chief economist of Axa. The data published on Tuesday indeed give contrary indications, which make interpretations difficult. On the bad news side, in addition to the very slight increase between March and April, inflation in the services sector rose (from 5.1% in March to 5.2% in April). On the good news side, so-called “core” inflation, i.e. excluding the highly fluctuating elements of energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, is for the first time since the beginning of the war in Ukraine down slightly: it was 5.6% in April, once morest 5.7% in March. Almost nothing, but enough to hope that the upward trend is now reversing.
Looking back over several months, however, the fall in inflation is starting to be really noticeable in some countries. Belgium fell from a peak of 10.2% to 3.3% in April; the Netherlands from 11.3% to 5.9%; Spain from 10.7% to 3.8%; Estonia from 25.2% to 13.2%; Germany from 10.6% to 7.6%. For households and businesses alike, the noose is beginning to loosen.
Cheaper gas and oil
Three major factors explain this lull: the decline in energy prices, the return to normal in world trade, and the sharp rise in interest rates. The first is the most direct and obvious.
After soaring at the start of the war in Ukraine, and even more so during the summer of 2022, when Vladimir Putin cut gas supplies to Europe, energy prices are now falling. Gas, whose price has increased eightfold, with a peak of more than 300 euros per megawatt hour at the end of August 2022, is trading today around 39 euros, i.e. a level lower than that of the months preceding the war.
For oil, the decline is less marked, but real. The barrel of Brent is hovering around 75 dollars (around 68 euros), once morest a peak of nearly 115 dollars in June 2022. At the pump, this is starting to be felt. Last week, the liter of unleaded 95 sold on average in France at 1.91 euros per litre, more than the same period last year (1.80 euros), but less than the peak of 2 ,13 euros from June 2022.
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