Portugal CPI Rises 1.6%

Portugal’s consumer price index rose by 1.6% year-on-year in July, a slight uptick compared with a 1.5% rise in June. Against the previous month inflation was -0.6% and the 12-month average remained at 1.1%, unchanged from the previous month, the National Statistics Institute noted, PortugalNews reported. Underlying inflation (excluding energy and unprocessed food products) recorded a 1% rise on year, the same as the rise seen in June. Meanwhile, the harmonized index of consumer prices increased by 2.2% year-on-year, 0.2 percentage points higher than in the previous month and 0.1 percentage points lower than Eurostat’s estimate for the eurozone (in June, there was no difference.) Housing rental prices increased 2.1% in July, higher than the previous month by 0.2 percentage points, although in Lisbon the rise was 2.7%, INE noted. In the same month the average price per square meter for house rentals rose by 0.2%, with the Algarve the “region with the highest monthly variation” INE said.