Press release No. 149 of 29 April 2020
Consumer price index, April 2020:
+0.8% on the same month a year earlier (provisional)
+0.3% on the previous month (provisional)
Harmonised index of consumer prices, April 2020:
+0.8% on the same month a year earlier (provisional)
+0.4% on the previous month (provisional)
WIESBADEN – The inflation rate in Germany, measured as the year-on-year change in the consumer price index, is expected to be 0.8% in April 2020. Based on the results available so far, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that consumer prices are expected to increase by 0.3% on March 2020.
| Overall index / subindex | Weight | January 2020 | February 2020 | March 2020 | April 2020 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| in per mill | in percent | ||||
| 1: Provisional figure. 2: Household energy and motor fuels. 3: Net rents and other rents. | |||||
| Overall index | 1,000 | 1.7 | 1.7 | 1.4 | 0.8 |
| Goods | 468.16 | 2.0 | 1.8 | 1.3 | 0.3 |
| including: | |||||
| Energy 2 | 103.83 | 3.4 | 2.0 | -0.9 | -5.8 |
| Food | 84.87 | 2.3 | 3.3 | 3.7 | 4.8 |
| Services | 531.84 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.4 | 1.3 |
| including: | |||||
| Rents 3 | 207.26 | 1.4 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.4 |
The current corona crisis caused some price collection problems in April 2020. Some products were not available in the market and, in addition, some difficulties were encountered in shop-based price collection. The prices of goods and services which could not be collected or only be collected to a very limited extent were updated using various methods or - in the case of goods with stable prices - taken from the previous month. So the quality of the provisional overall results is again assured.
To ensure a Europe-wide uniform approach in this special situation, coordination with the statistical offices of the Länder and the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat) was very close regarding the treatment, in methodological terms, of missing prices in CPI/HICP compilation.
More information on the methods used and data quality in the current month is provided on the website of the Federal Statistical Office.
The final results for April 2020 will be released on 14 May 2020.
