LONDON: British consumer price inflation was a smidgen stronger in July than analysts had expected, coming in at +0.1% year-on-year.
Core prices, which strip out the effects of volatile items like food and energy, rose by 1.2%, considerably more than expected.
Analysts were expecting pretty much precisely what happened in June to happen in July too — 0% consumer price inflation (CPI) year-on-year, and 0.8% core price inflation.
Inflation is bumping along near 0%, far from the Bank of England’s 2% target, but that’s not expected to last forever.
CPI is particularly low because of oil prices, which have driven down the cost of fuel, but they can’t keep falling forever — that’s why the core CPI figure is used as another measure of what’s happening in the economy.
