Inflation in Spain: shopping basket and clothes prices keep rising in Malaga and on the Costa del Sol
The province remains amongst those with the highest inflation rates in country for even basic goods and services. Here we drill down into the data...
Prices in Malaga province accelerated their rate of increase in August, in contrast to what happened elsewhere in Spain. Let's take a look at the details: inflation stood at 3.1% year-on-year, compared to 3% recorded in July. Meanwhile, across the country, the increase in the general price index (the average price changes for a fixed set of goods and services) compared to the same time last year stood at 2.7%. Still, Malaga is no longer the province with the highest price rises, as was the case at the beginning of the year. Ahead of Malaga are other provinces, mostly tourist destinations, such as Castellón (3.7%), the Balearic Islands, Alicante and Álava (all at 3.2%).
Of all the components that Spain's INE national statistics institute takes into consideration to calculate this general price index, two particularly stand out in Malaga, having performed in August in exactly the opposite way to the rest of Spain. Food and non-alcoholic beverages, or rather the 'shopping basket', rose at a year-on-year rate of 2.3%, an acceleration of four tenths of a percentage point compared to July. In Spain, however, the rise in the price of basic goods has slowed down, with the rate of increase falling from 2.7% to 2.3% between July and August. Therefore, while the price increase in Spain as a whole was the lowest in four months, in Malaga it was the highest since July of last year. The rate of price increases in the shopping basket has been the same in Spain and Malaga, but there was a significant period of time when these prices on the Costa del Sol in particular performed better than in the rest of Spain.
Looking at this in more detail: while food prices rose 1.9% last month in Malaga, non-alcoholic beverages recorded an increase of 5.9% compared to the 4.2% increase in July. In contrast, alcoholic beverages fell by 0.9% in August, their second consecutive month of decline in the province.
Clothing prices soar
In fact, there is another component of the general price index whose rise was even more striking, especially when compared to its performance across Spain: clothing and footwear. In Malaga this August, this basket item rose at a year-on-year rate of 5.3%, up from 3.8% in July. Yet, in the rest of Spain, clothing and footwear rose at a rate of only 0.7% year-on-year, below even the July figure (0.8%).
The breakdown by the INE also reveals that clothing has seen the greatest increase: a whopping 6.5% rise in the province, compared to 0.9% nationwide. Footwear and footwear repairs have seen a year-on-year increase of only 1.3%.
Other goods rising more in Malaga
The increase in housing and utilities is also higher in Malaga (6.8%) than the Spanish average (6%). The same is true for furniture and household goods: 1.5% in Malaga compared to 0.8% nationwide. Also with healthcare (3.7% in Malaga, compared to 2% nationally).
Other basic goods and services: education is also more expensive in this coastal province than in Spain as a whole. This is especially striking in secondary education, where it is 6.5% up locally compared to a 3.5% increase in the national average.
As for the goods most closely linked to tourism, while restaurant and hotel prices registered similar rises in Malaga and in Spain as a whole (around 4.4%), accommodation services in Malaga rose by 10% in August, almost twice as much as in all Spain (5.8%).
