HICP at constant taxes - monthly data (monthly rate of change)

Description

Harmonised Indices of Consumer Prices (HICPs) give comparable measures of inflation for the countries and country groups for which they are produced. They are economic indicators that measure the change over time of the prices of consumer goods and services acquired by households. In other words, they are a set of consumer price indices (CPIs) calculated according to a harmonised approach and a single set of definitions. In particular, HICPs provide the official measure of consumer price inflation in the euro area for the purposes of monetary policy and the assessment of inflation convergence as required under the Maastricht criteria for accession to the euro. HICPs are available for all EU Member States, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. In addition to the individual country series there are three key country-group aggregate indices: the Monetary Union Index of Consumer Prices (MUICP or EA) covering the euro area countries, the European index of consumer prices (EICP or EU) including all Member States, and the European Economic Area index of consumer prices (EEAICP), which in addition to the EU also covers Iceland and Norway. The official country-group aggregates reflect the evolution of Economic and monetary union, the EU and the EEA. HICPs for new Member States are chained into the aggregate indices at the time of accession. In addition to these official aggregates, Eurostat computes also country aggregates with stable composition over time. For example, the aggregate 'EU-28' shows price indices covering all current 28 Member States since 1997.

There are also interim HICPs for candidate country Turkey. It is expected that once it accedes to the EU its HICPs will be fully comparable with those of the existing Member States. For the USA, only the all-items proxy-HICP is available. The national HICPs are produced by National Statistical Institutes, while the country-group aggregates are produced by Eurostat. The data that is released monthly on Eurostat's free dissemination database include price indices themselves as well as their rates of change as monthly, annual and 12-month moving average changes. In addition to the headline figure, the all-items HICP, around one hundred sub-indices for different goods and services and over thirty special aggregates are made available. The relative weights for the indices, including the special aggregates, are published for the individual countries and for the country groups. An early estimate of the overall inflation rate for the euro area, as well as estimates for its four main components, are published in a news release monthly, usually on the last working day of the reference month. They are called HICP flash estimates. Â