7%, or almost. The consumer price index measured each month by INSEE is likely to turn red over the summer. Will it cross the symbolic 7% mark at the end of the summer, when it has just exceeded 5% in May? Suspense. INSEE anticipates inflation of 6.8% in September.
The consumer price thermometer is panicking. 2.9% in January last year, which was already a lot in view of the history of recent years, the rise being then put on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic. Then 3.6% in February. And 4.5% in Marchthe triggering of the war in ukraine having clearly accelerated the surge in prices that has already begun. Since then, records have fallen: 4.8% in April5.2% in May, and probably 5.9% in June 2022 according to the forecast delivered this Friday by INSEE in its quarterly economic note.
This monthly measure of inflation compares prices over 12 months, in other words schematically the prices of June 2022 compared to those of June 2021. In one year, all consumer prices in France have increased by almost 6%. The archives of this CPI, updated each month (more precisely we speak of annual shift) go back to 1990. never has this sliding inflation exceeded 5% in more than 30 years of records!
Just under 7% in September
And it’s not over: Over the next six months, inflation would first continue to rise, reaching 5.9% year on year in June and then just under 7% in September, before stabilize overall between 6.5% and 7% at the end of the year, we read in the note from INSEE. More specifically, INSEE expects inflation at this stage to reach its peak 6.8% in September 2022to remain around 6.8% until the end of the year.
But beware: faced with an uncertain economic and political context, INSEE stresses that it is a matter of conditional forecasts are based on the current situation, other events could still upset these estimates. We are moving towards a stabilization of inflation from September, confirms Olivier Simon, head of the economic summary division of INSEE, during a press briefing.
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Over the whole of 2022: +5.5% inflation compared to 2021
As 2022 saw inflation rise over the months, INSEE forecasts a price increase over the whole year of 5.5% at the end of the first half of the year, compared to 1.6% in 2021. Again, to find such high annual inflation, we have to go far back in the archives: 1985, to find traces of annual inflation above 5%, adds Olivier Simon. In 1985, when the French obviously paid in francs, inflation reached 5.8%. The year 2022 will indeed remain as the year of the heat stroke on prices.
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