Prices of consumer goods showed a small decrease in 2020 compared with last year, the Statistical Service of Cyprus (CYSTAT) announced on Thursday.

There was deflation for the period January-July 2020, according to the Statistical Service’s report, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) dropping by 0.4% compared with the same period of the previous year.

This is mainly due to reduced prices in transportation. Compared with last year, Transport recorded the largest change for the period January–July 2020, with 3.6%. The category also had one of the largest effect on the change of the CPI, along with the categories Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels.

In July 2020, the Consumer Price Index decreased by 0.75 units and reached 98.52 units compared with 99.27 units in June 2020. Compared with July 2019, the CPI decreased by 1.5%, CYSTAT said.

Most consumer goods and services categories went down in price this year.

The largest change was recorded in Electricity, where prices decreased by 23.3% in July this year, compared with the same period last year, and by 11.3% when compared with June 2020. Electricity (-0,88) along with Petroleum products (-1.01) had the most notable effect on the change of the CPI of July 2020 compared with July 2019.

Prices in other categories also decreased compared with July 2019, including Housing, water, gas and other fuels (-7.7%) and Transport (-5.1%)

On the other hand, the prices of clothing and footwear increased, with the largest positive change of 6.1% compared with last year. But the prices of clothing and footwear decreased by 6.5% from June 2020.

As a result, Clothing and Footwear (-0,47) along with the categories Food and non-Alcoholic Beverages (-0.51) had the largest negative effect on the change of the CPI compared with June. Transport (0.48), despite its decrease from 2019, had the largest positive effect on CPI compared with the previous month.

Fresh vegetables had the largest negative effect of 0.47 units on the change of the CPI of July 2020 compared with the previous month, whereas petroleum products had the largest positive effect of 0.40 units.

The price data collection is carried out only in urban districts of Nicosia, Larnaca, Limassol and Paphos. For each city, the fluctuations in the product prices each month are weighted according to their population. Specifically, the weights for the four districts are: Nicosia 42%, Limassol 30%, Larnaca 18% and Paphos 10%.

Source: Cyprus Mail