Today’s figures show United Kingdom prices increased incrementally to 0.2% in December.
Advertisement
Adrian Whittaker, Sales Director, New Street Mortgages, commented: “These figures from the ONS are typical of the strong growth that the housing market experienced a year ago, as house prices rose well above the level of inflation”. That said, if the renewed collapse in the oil price over the past few weeks continues to feed through to petrol prices, this will boring the impact of these base effects and slow the rate at which inflation picks up.
Statistics New Zealand said were it not for the annual increase in the excise tax on cigarettes and tobacco – inflation would have fallen 0.3% in 2015. The upward pressure in services inflation was driven primarily by air fares as it advanced 26.8 percent y/y, which made up for about 0.16pp of the rise in headline inflation.
Chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight Howard Archer said: “UK consumer price inflation is expected to have been minimal again in December due to ongoing appreciable discounting by retailers, muted food prices and lower petrol prices”.
“The Bank’s most recent minutes reiterate its expectation for inflation to increase modestly in the coming months, though they also note that continued weakness in the oil price makes it likely this will be more gradual than previously forecast”.
“Not only does this support our view for further rate cuts, it suggests an increased risk that cuts could happen earlier than June, particularly if domestic and offshore economic conditions continue to deteriorate”, he said.
He’s picking that might even come as early as March.
Latest minutes from the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), which voted 8-1 to keep rates at their current historic 0.5% low, showed that members expect inflation to remain far below its 2% target for some time yet.
The average price of a liter of 91 octane petrol in the December 2015 quarter was NZ$1.84, compared with NZ$1.98 in the September quarter.
Nigeria’s consumer price index, which measures inflation, rose to its highest since December 2012, at 9.55 percent year-on-year against predictions by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, average house prices increased by 0.8% between October and November 2015 and prices paid by first time buyers were 7.4% higher on average than in November 2014.
In the fourth-quarter, CPI inflation fell to just 0.1%, from 0.4% in the third-quarter.
However, IPSE’s quarterly Freelancer Confidence Index has shown throughout 2015 that a high percentage of freelancers are concerned about rising business costs.
A slump in world oil prices has helped inflation bump along at zero for almost a year – well below the Bank of England’s 2% target.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, the Retail Prices Index, which includes housing costs, rose by 1.2%, up from 1.1% in November.
