Eurostat: Poland with one of the highest inflations in EU

"The euro area annual inflation rate was 9.1% in August 2022, up from 8.9% in July. A year earlier, the rate was 3.0%. European Union annual inflation was 10.1% in August 2022, up from 9.8% in July. A year earlier, the rate was 3.2%" - said Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

"The lowest annual rates were registered in France (6.6%), Malta (7.0%) and Finland (7.9%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Estonia (25.2%), Latvia (21.4%) and Lithuania (21.1%). Compared with July, annual inflation fell in twelve Member States and rose in fifteen," Eurostat added.

"In August, the highest contribution to the annual euro area inflation rate came from energy (+3.95 percentage points, pp), followed by food, alcohol & tobacco (+2.25 pp), services (+1.62 pp) and non-energy industrial goods (+1.33 pp)" - we read.

Poland is one of the EU countries with the highest inflation. Consumer prices in Poland in August 2022, calculated with the HICP methodology, were at 14.8% year on year, against 14.2 in July. In a month on month comparison, prices in Poland increased by 0.8%.

Apart from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, only three other EU Member States recorded higher inflation than Poland in August: Hungary (18.6%), Czech Republic (17.1%) and Bulgaria (15.0%).

According to Poland's Central Statistical Office, which uses a different methodology, consumer prices in August increased by 16.1% year on year. This was the highest spike since March 1997, which was more than a quarter of a century ago.

Poland's central bank said on Friday that the country's core inflation, which does not include prices of food and energy, was at 9.9% in August, against 9.3% in July.

Core inflation represents the long run trend in the price level. In measuring long run inflation, transitory price changes should be excluded. One way of accomplishing this is by excluding items frequently subject to volatile prices, like food and energy.