In 2024, the Consumer Price index (CPI) recorded an average annual growth rate of 2.4 (4.3% in 2023). The decrease in the CPI average growth rate between 2023 and 2024 was influenced by the behaviour of core inflation (total index excluding unprocessed food and energy products), which presented an average annual growth rate of 2.5% (5.0% in the previous year), and by the slowdown in unprocessed food products, which recorded an average annual growth rate of 1.6% (9.5% in 2023). Conversely, energy products, which had a negative contribution in 2023, presented a positive contribution to the 2024 annual average rate.
The industrial producer price index presented an average annual growth of 0.3% in 2024, after a nil rate in the previous year. Excluding the energy component, there was a nil average annual rate of change in the last year, after a growth of 3.5% in the previous year. In the industrial production of consumer goods, there was a 2.4% increase in prices, significantly lower than that observed in 2023 (9.8%).
On the external side, the implicit prices of imports of goods, considering the data up to November, recorded a rate of change of -3.7% in 2024 (-5.1% in 2023). Excluding petroleum products, there was a decrease of 3.5% in the first eleven months of 2024, compared with a decrease of 1.7% in the previous year.
Short-term indicators from the production perspective, available for November, point to a nominal slowdown and a decline in volume in the industry sector and to an acceleration in nominal terms of services and in volume of construction, slightly in the latter case. From the expenditure perspective, the economic activity indicator slowed down in year-on-year terms in November after accelerating between August and October, with the private consumption indicator decelerating, while the investment indicator recorded a slight acceleration. The economic climate indicator, which summarizes the balances of responses to questions relating to business surveys, increased between September and December, reaching its highest level since March 2019.
In November, according to the provisional monthly estimates of the Labour Force Survey, the unemployment rate (16 to 74 years old), adjusted for seasonality, was 6.7%, 0.1 percentage points higher than in October (6.4% in August). The labour underutilisation rate (16 to 74 years old) was 11.0%, 0.1 percentage points higher than the value recorded in October.