Inflation in Malta rose slightly in December, even as it dipped in the EU and the UK, official figures showed on Wednesday.

The National Statistics Office said that in December, the annual rate of inflation was 7.3 per cent, up from the 7.2 per cent in November 2022.

The 12-month moving average rate for December stood at 6.1 per cent.

The inflation rate since 2020.

The largest upward impact on annual inflation was measured in the food and non-alcoholic beverages index, which rose by 2.41 percentage points, largely due to higher prices of meat. No downward impacts on annual inflation were registered in any sector.

In contrast to other countries, energy prices are not a factor of inflation in Malta since prices have been frozen for months some two years. A recent drop in oil prices helped ease EU and UK inflation over the past month.

Food prices are the biggest cause of inflation in Malta.

Eurozone inflation drops  

The EU said on Wednesday that the euro area annual inflation rate was 9.2% in December 2022, down from 10.1% in November. A year earlier, the rate was 5.0%. European Union annual inflation was 10.4% in December 2022, down from 11.1% in November. A year earlier, the rate was 5.3%. These figures are published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

Malta has the fourth lowest inflation in the EU.

The lowest annual rates were registered in Spain (5.5%), Luxembourg (6.2%) and France (6.7%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Hungary (25.0%), Latvia (20.7%) and Lithuania (20.0%).

Malta's inflation rate was the fourth lowest in the EU.

In December, the highest contribution to the annual euro area inflation rate came from food, alcohol & tobacco (+2.88 percentage points, pp), followed by energy (+2.79 pp), services (+1.83 pp) and non-energy industrial goods (+1.70 pp).

The UK said that annual inflation in Britain slowed to 10.5 per cent in December, but remained close to historically high levels that are causing a cost-of-living crisis and mass strikes.