HICP in Austria

The Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is a statistical measure of the change in prices of the goods and services bought by households resident in Austria, computed with Eurostat's common methodology so that EU countries can be compared. It is published by Statistik Austria and is the inflation benchmark used by the ECB.

It is compiled from a regular price survey across a broad sample of outlets and geographic areas. Those prices and the weight of each product in the consumption basket produce an index with a base year (index 100) that is updated periodically. It is released as a year-on-year and month-on-month change.

It is the most closely watched inflation reading: price changes directly affect households' consumption, saving and purchasing power, and the HICP is the ECB's central reference when setting euro-area interest rates. A hotter-than-expected print tends to push rates and the euro higher.

It measures only the price change of the goods and services in a given basket, so it does not capture every price in the economy. To read the underlying trend, energy and unprocessed food are usually stripped out, giving the core CPI.