The year 2024 ends with moderate price increases, 1.3% in December, levels far removed from the records reached in the previous two years.
The year 2024 ended on at least a positive note in the economic sphere. Inflation has stopped its mad course. It started it during the pandemic, from 2021, with the disorganization of global production chains, accelerated by the consequences on energy of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In December, prices at consumption in France increased by 1.3% over one year, according to the provisional estimate from INSEE published Tuesday January 7 – an identical development to that observed in November.
In detail, INSEE notes that “the slight rebound in energy prices would be offset by the slightly more pronounced drop than in November in the prices of manufactured products and by the slowdown in those of food which would stabilize”. Inflation returns to more usual levels, far from those recorded in 2022 with 5.2% on average, or in 2023, with 4.9%. This clear lull should continue in the first half of this year, with the Statistical Institute anticipating, in a note published in December, inflation of 1% in June over one year.
Disinflation is also confirmed on a European scale. Considering another indicator which allows comparisons between countries, the harmonized consumer price index (HICP) increased slightly in France, to 1.8% in December over one year, after 1.7% in November. In the euro zone, the increase was 2.4% year-on-year in December, a slight rebound which can be explained by the similar evolution of energy prices, according to Eurostat statistics also published on Tuesday. But here too, we remain far from the record of 10.6% over one year reached in October 2022.
This trend has allowed the European Central Bank (ECB), after a strong and rapid increase, to begin lowering its interest rates again, four times since June. Even if all the risks on prices have not been ruled out, the first of which being carried by the policy of increasing customs duties that Donald Trump says he wants to implement, it is no longer so much inflation as growth which is now worrying, while the euro zone is mired in stagnation.
France
