17 February 2022
Go to release: Consumer Price Index January 2022
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (17 February 2022) published the Consumer Price Index January 2022.
Commenting on annual changes shown in the release, Colin Cotter, Statistician, said: “The latest publication for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows that prices for consumer goods and services in January 2022 increased by 5.0% on average compared to January 2021. This follows an increase of 5.5% in the year to December 2021. Prices have been rising on an annual basis since April 2021, with annual inflation of 5% or more each month since October.
The most significant increases in the year were seen in Transport which was up 14.1%, with Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas & Other Fuels up 12.0% and Alcoholic Beverages & Tobacco which rose by 8.4%. The annual change in Transport costs reflects a rise in the cost of Diesel (+32.0%), Petrol (+29.5%) and Airfares (+26.7%) compared to January 2021. Increased energy costs are reflected in the yearly increase of Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas & Other Fuels with Electricity up 22.4%, Gas up 27.7% and Liquid Fuels (Home Heating Oil) up 50.1% in the year.
Clothing & Footwear (-3.7%) and Miscellaneous Goods & Services (-0.8%) were the only divisions to show a decrease when compared with January 2021.”
Commenting on monthly changes shown in the release, Colin Cotter, Statistician, continued: “Consumer prices in January decreased by 0.4% in the month. This is the first monthly decrease following 14 months of rising prices, which was the longest consecutive sequence of month-on-month inflation since the monthly CPI series began in 1997.
The division with the largest monthly decrease was Clothing & Footwear (-8.0%), reflecting the effect of January sales. Transport prices were down 3.7% in the month, reflecting lower prices for airfares and services in respect of personal transport equipment compared to December 2021.
The largest monthly increase was seen in Alcoholic Beverages & Tobacco (+9.9%). Minimum unit pricing for alcohol came into effect in January 2022 and Alcoholic Beverage prices on average were up 17.4% from December 2021 and were up by 8.7% from January 2021.”
Commenting further Colin Cotter, added: “National average prices for selected CPI goods and services for December 2021 were also made available today by the CSO and show that diesel and petrol were up by 42.3 cent per litre and 40.7 cent per litre respectively between December 2020 and December 2021.
Looking at some staple items, the national average price for bread (large (800g) white sliced pan) was up 10.0 cent in the year to December 2021, while the same size brown sliced pan is up 13.2 cent in the year. Butter per lb increased by 12.0 cent in the year while the average price for 80 tea bags increased by 5.2 cent.
The national average price of a pint of stout at €4.94 was up 6.1 cent on average from December 2020 while a pint of lager at €5.31 was up 4.9 cent.”
The National Average Prices are compiled together with the CPI and more details for December 2021 are available at: https://data.cso.ie/table/CPM12
The CSO published the following Information Note on 28 January 2022 to provide some background information on the CPI including how it is calculated: https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/in/cpi/in-cpiexplained/
The January 2022 CPI release published today includes the annual update of CPI weights. Since 2012 the weights of the items in the basket have been updated annually at CPI COICOP class (4-digit) level using information on consumer expenditure from National Accounts Household Final Monetary Consumption Expenditure (HFMCE).
Go to weights document: Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) expenditure weights by COICOP Division 2017 - 2022
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