Euro area core consumer prices rise more quickly than expected in August
The cost of living in the euro area picked up a tad more quickly than anticipated during the month of August, driven by gains for food, non-industrial goods and services' prices.
According to a preliminary estimate from Eurostat, euro area consumer prices edged rose at a month-on-month pace of 0.5% (consensus: 0.4%).
That served to push the annual rate of gains in the Consumer Price Index from 8.9% in July to 9.1% for August.
Economists had penciled-in a rate of advance of 9.0%.
Prices of food, alcohol and tobacco registered the biggest increase, rising by 1.0% on the month so that the annual rate sped up from June's 9.8% to 10.6%.
Energy prices on the other hand were flat on the month.
At the so-called 'core' level, which in the case of the European Central Bank excludes energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, CPI was ahead by 4.3%.
Consensus had been for core CPI to rise at a year-on-year pace of 4.0%.
Non-energy industrial goods prices rose by 0.8% versus June, while those for services were up by 0.4%.
In year over year terms, non-energy industrial goods and services prices advanced at a pace of 5.0% and 3.8%, respectively, in comparison to June's gains of 4.5% and 3.7%.
Euro/dollar was slipping a tad more on the back of the news, by 0.31% to 0.9984 as of 1016 BST.
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