Press release No. 041 of 9 February 2023
Consumer price index, January 2023:
+8.7% on the same month a year earlier (provisional)
+1.0% on the previous month (provisional)
Harmonised index of consumer prices, January 2023:
+9.2% on the same month a year earlier (provisional)
+0.5% on the previous month (provisional)
WIESBADEN – The inflation rate in Germany is expected to be +8.7% in January 2023. It is measured as the change in the consumer price index (CPI) compared with the same month a year earlier. Based on the results available so far, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that consumer prices are expected to increase by 1.0% on December 2022. The consumer price index for Germany is revised as part of a regular process and the base year moved to 2020 as of reference month January 2023. The new base has already been used in calculating the present provisional results for January 2023.
Revisions in consumer price statistics require extensive adjustments of the IT processes used to calculate Land and federal results. In the course of programming, an unexpected technical problem arose in the processing of the data. This made it necessary to postpone the release of the provisional consumer price index results for the month of January 2023, which had initially been scheduled for 31 January 2023. This press release provides only first results of the consumer price index and the harmonised index of consumer prices at federal level, as is usual when the base period changes. Results for individual product groups or Länder are not published at this point in time.
More information on the revision in consumer price statistics:
With effect from January 2023, the consumer price index is rebased from 2015 to base year 2020. In this context, results from January 2020 onwards are recalculated. Results for earlier periods on base 2015 will only be converted to base year 2020.
The final results for January 2023 and all results recalculated from January 2020 onwards using the new 2020 base year will be published by the Federal Statistical Office on 22 February 2023. Comprehensive supplementary information on the revision will also be released at that time.
Information on the revision especially for users of consumer price indices in stable-value clauses is available under “Umbasierung und Wertsicherungsklauseln“ on the theme page on “Consumer price index“ provided on the website of the Federal Statistical Office.
Methodological note:
The consumer price index (CPI) and the harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) differ in coverage and methodology. In contrast to the HICP, the CPI includes also household expenditure on owner-occupied housing, games of chance and broadcasting fees. In addition, the HICP product weights are updated annually. As the weight of housing is much smaller in the HICP basket, price increases in other product groups have a larger impact on the HICP than on the CPI.
