(Reuters) -Spanish consumer prices rose 6.1% year-on-year in January, final official data showed on Tuesday, up from a first flash estimate of 6.0% released two weeks ago and down from 6.5% in the 12 months to December.
The 12-month inflation rate declined in January for the first time since February 2021, data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed.
Prices of housing and utilities were 18.1% higher than in January 2020, but 5 percentage points lower than the 12-month increase recorded in December, INE said in its more detailed second reading.
Most notably, the year-on-year electricity prices increase in January was lower than in December as a severe snow storm in central Spain caused a peak of demand in January last year.
Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, was 2.4% year on year, the highest since 2012 and up from a reading of 2.1% a month earlier, the National Statistics Institute data showed.
Even though it has slowed in January, the inflation rate in Spain was still faster than the rate in the euro zone as a whole, which stood at 5.1%.
The group’s inflation in January hit a record high, defying expectations for a big drop and piling pressure on the European Central Bank to finally admit that price growth is not as temporary and benign as it has long predicted.
However, ECB chief economist Philip Lane reiterated last week that record-high inflation rate in the euro zone was temporary.
(Reporting by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez, editing by Inti Landauro, William Maclean)
