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Whereas the prices of services increased by an average of 1% over the year before, goods prices fell across the board, by an average of 0.9%.

The biggest price drops were recorded in the groups telecommunications (3.4%), housing equipment (2.1%), clothing (1.2%) and health services (0.9%).

However, the main factors driving the deflationary trend have been cheaper fuels, electricity, phone services, housing equipment and clothing; each of these reduced annual inflation by 0.2 percentage points.

Tobacco and alcohol, which were up 4.8% and 2% respectively year-on-year, added 0.2 percentage points to the inflation rate.

At the monthly level the main drivers of inflation were new clothing and footwear collections that arrived in stores after the summer sales, which raised the prices in these two groups by over a tenth and contributed 0.7 points to the monthly rate.

However, the effect was almost entirely offset by a 13.7% drop in the prices of package holidays, which reduced the rate by 0.5 points.