Inflation drops to zero

Britain is on the cusp of deflation after prices failed to rise over the last year.

735-UK-inflation

The Retail Price Index (RPI), which includes housing costs, is still above zero and last dipped into deflation in 2009 (see chart above). Lower food and petrol prices were behind the decline: they have fallen by 3.4% and 17% respectively over the past 12 months. Core inflation (which strips out food and energy prices) also weakened, from 1.4% to 1.2%.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.