Inflation below euro average | eKathimerini.com

Greece’s harmonized index of consumer prices dropped in May to below the average inflation in the eurozone for the first time since last September, according to Eurostat estimates.

In fact, Greece is the only eurozone member where there has been a decrease in the index – i.e. not just a slowdown in the rate of price growth – on a monthly basis (compared to April 2024). Negative energy inflation, the three-month block on offers by retailers who raise their prices that significantly limited price hikes, as well as the fact that Orthodox Easter this year was in May, which often means big offers are seen as key factors in both the easing of the consumer price index in May as well as for the deviation from the corresponding index in the eurozone.

So, according to what Eurostat announced, the harmonized consumer price index in Greece is estimated to have been formed in May at 2.3% against 3.2%, which was the annual change of the index in April 2024. With this performance, Greece had the fifth lowest inflation in the eurozone, after Latvia (0.2%), Finland (0.5%), Italy (0.8%), Lithuania (also 0.8%) and Ireland (1.9%).

In the eurozone, the harmonized index of consumer prices followed the opposite path to that in Greece, as it reached 2.6% in May, compared to 2.4% in April. Services are now the ones pushing up the consumer price index, as at the eurozone level their prices rose 4.1% year-on-year compared to an annual change of 3.7% in April. Increases also continued in food, 2.6% in May from 2.8% in April, while the separate energy price index stood at 0.3% from 0.6% in April.

It is also worth noting that Greece is the only country among euro-area members where a decrease was recorded in the consumer price index in May 2024 compared to April 2024, albeit a marginal one, of the order of 0.3%.

Although we will have more data on the national consumer price index the day after the European elections, as ELSTAT has scheduled its announcement for June 10, Development Minister Kostas Skrekas has already welcomed the Eurostat data.