Passers-by walk in the pedestrian zone of the Bavarian capital.
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Although Germany narrowly avoided a technical recession in the third quarter, German inflation soared to 2.4% in October, returning to above the European Central Bank’s 2% target.
The preliminary reports published by the German statistics office Destatis are harmonized across the euro area to achieve comparability.
Analysts polled by Reuters had expected unified inflation to be 2.1% in October.
After reaching the European Central Bank’s 2% target in August, the coordinated inflation rate fell to 1.8% in September.
Germany’s Statistics Office said on Wednesday that so-called core inflation, excluding volatile food and energy costs, was 2.9% in October, up from 2.7% in September.
Services industry inflation also rose to 4% in October from 3.8% last month.
Before the release of the data, the German Statistics Office released preliminary data on Germany’s gross domestic product earlier on Wednesday. Germany’s gross domestic product increased by 0.2% in the third quarter compared with the previous three months.
The increase surprised analysts polled by Reuters, who had expected the German economy to contract by 0.1%, narrowly avoiding a technical recession – characterized by two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.
Destatis also revised down second-quarter GDP data to a contraction of 0.3% from a previously reported decline of 0.1%.
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