Latvia Inflation September 2007

Well, Latvijas Statistika have just published the September inflation number, and the news is not good. Year on year inflation rose to 11.4%, the second highest rate in the EU (Bulgaria's annual inflation rate was 12 percent in August). I have just published an extensive post on the recent Estonia inflation data, and since the issues are essentially the same in both cases, I will simply report the data here.

Firstly here's the chart:



As can be seen, inflation is accelerating, and not reducing. On a year on year basis the big items are food and drink, entertainment, education and housing. As these are year on year data, the housing component may cool considerably as we move forward now, after several months of steady easing, although even on housing the statistics office record a month on month increase of 1.4% from August.

At the same time we have new data which shows that industrial output in August by 2.6% over July, and by 3.3% on a seasonally adjusted basis over August 2006.