Inflation increases to 1% in January

The year-on-year change in consumer prices was 1.0 per cent in January, according to Statistics Finland.

In December, inflation stood at 0.9 per cent. The commodity basket for the Consumer Price Index and the weight structure were updated at the beginning of January.

Men’s and women’s sports shirts were added to the commodity basket. In addition, the usage of total data was expanded with fresh products, soft and alcoholic drinks, cleaning and maintenance products and personal hygiene products.

Consumer prices were raised most in January by price hikes of petrol, cigars, vegetables, and electricity over the previous year.

The rising of consumer prices from one year back was curbed most by reductions in the prices of package international holidays within the EU, average interest rate on housing loans, mobile phones, and televisions.

From December to January, the month-on-month change of consumer prices was -0.3 per cent, which was caused by lower prices of seasonal clothing and international flights.

At every mid-month, Statistics Finland’s interviewers collect altogether 33,000 prices of nearly 400 commodities from approximately 2,500 outlets to build the Consumer Price Index.

The price data is supplemented with scanner data wherefrom four million individual prices are included into calculation. In addition, some 1,000 items of price data are gathered by centralised collection.