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Photo: Sven Hoppe / dpa
Despite a slight decline, inflation in Germany remains comparatively high.
Goods and services cost an average of 2.3 percent more in June than a year earlier, as the Federal Statistical Office announced in its first estimate on Tuesday.
In May, the rate of inflation had climbed to 2.5 percent, its highest level since September 2011.
Economists polled by the Reuters news agency had expected a decline to 2.3 percent for June.
Experts assume that inflation will rise again in the coming months and could even reach three percent or more in the second half of the year.
This increase has different causes.
On the one hand, the increase is also due to the fact that prices were lower in the second half of 2020 because they were depressed by the temporarily reduced VAT.
This effect has now been reversed.
The biggest price driver is energy
In addition, due to the very strong recovery of the global economy in many places, numerous industries are struggling with material shortages.
For weeks, for example, there have been wide-ranging bottlenecks in building materials or microchips - and prices have risen as a result.
Energy prices are also rising sharply because crude oil is now much more expensive than it was a year ago.
However, some economists also fear that the rise in the inflation rate could be a permanent phenomenon.
The financial markets are observing the rise in inflation in many regions very closely; the European Central Bank sees a price increase of just under two percent as ideal in the medium term for the economy in the member states of the euro zone.
The biggest price driver was again energy.
In Baden-Württemberg, for example, refueling cost almost 27 percent more than in June 2020 and in North Rhine-Westphalia almost 24 percent more.
In contrast, package tours in North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony were five percent cheaper.
beb / Reuters