Lisbon, March 12, 2025 (Lusa) - Statistics Portugal (INE) confirmed on Wednesday that the year-on-year inflation rate was 2.4% in February, 0.1 percentage points less than in January.
Rounded to one decimal place, the rate of change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for February published today by INE coincides with the value of the flash estimate released by the institute on 28 February.
The underlying inflation indicator, which excludes more volatile products such as food and energy, recorded a year-on-year change of 2.5% in February, 0.2 percentage points lower than the previous month (2.7%).
Analysing the indicators that make up the CPI, we can see that the change in the index for energy products fell from 2.4% in January to 1.5% in February, while the change in the index for unprocessed food increased to 2.4% (1.8% in January).
By expenditure class and compared to the previous month, INE highlights the decreases in the year-on-year rates of change for "communications" and "transport", with changes of 0.3% and 1.3% respectively (5.5% and 2.4% in January).
Conversely, there were increases in "clothing and footwear" and "alcoholic beverages and tobacco", with changes of 2.4% and 3.4% respectively (0.5% and 2.8% in the previous month).
In February, the classes that made the biggest positive contributions to the year-on-year change in the CPI were "restaurants and hotels", "food and non-alcoholic drinks", and "housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels".
On the other hand, the only class with a negative contribution was "accessories, household equipment and routine household maintenance".
In a chain comparison, the change in the CPI was -0.1% (-0.5% in the previous month and zero in February 2024), while the average change over the last 12 months was 2.5% (2.4% in the previous month).
The Portuguese Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), which allows comparisons between European countries, showed a 2.5% year-on-year change in February, 0.2 percentage points lower than the previous month and 0.1 percentage points higher than the figure estimated by Eurostat for the Euro area (in January, this difference was 0.2 percentage points).
The HICP recorded a monthly change of -0.1% (-0.6% in the previous month and 0.2% in February 2024) and an average change over the last 12 months of 2.7% (the same figure in the previous month).
PD/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
