ZAGREB, 1 Aug (Hina) – Croatia’s inflation rate, measured by the national Consumer Price Index, rose to 4.1% year-on-year in July 2025, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics (DZS) reported on Friday. This marks the third consecutive month of accelerating price growth.
The overall inflation in Croatia, measured by the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), slightly accelerated to 4.5% in July 2025 from 4.4% in June, primarily due to a pronounced rise in food prices and, to a lesser extent, higher inflation in industrial goods, according to the HNB.
Food price inflation increased to 7.0% from 5.7% in June, partly reflecting previous increases in food raw material costs and labour expenses.
Conversely, energy price inflation slowed to 2.6% from 2.9% in June, reflecting a global decline in oil prices that, after a brief spike in June, translated into lower fuel prices in July. Despite rising industrial goods prices, service price inflation slowed significantly to 6.6% from 7.5%, leading to a decrease in core inflation to 3.8% from 4.0%, analysts at the HNB noted.
Due to the significant slowdown in service price inflation, its contribution to overall consumer inflation decreased to 2.1 percentage points, while the contribution of food prices increased noticeably to 2.0 percentage points.
The total HICP inflation rate across the entire euro area was 2.0% in July 2025, unchanged from June, causing the inflation gap between Croatia and the euro area average to widen slightly. After Estonia, Croatia had one of the highest inflation rates in the eurozone, alongside Slovakia.
According to data published by the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, inflation measured by the national Consumer Price Index (CPI), which excludes spending by foreign visitors and institutional households (such as educational, healthcare and religious institutions), accelerated from 3.7% in June to 4.1% in July.
Regarding the acceleration of inflation measured by the CPI in July, the HNB highlighted a sharp rise in food price inflation to 6.6% from 5.2%, along with a smaller increase in the annual rate of change for industrial goods prices, from -0.4% to 0.4%.
Conversely, inflation in service prices slowed to 5.7% from 6.7%, and energy price inflation slowed to 2.3% from 2.8%. Services contributed 1.5 percentage points to the total CPI inflation of 4.1%, while food contributed 2.1 percentage points.
The difference between the harmonised and national inflation indicators narrowed from 0.7 percentage points in June to 0.4 percentage points in July. The higher inflation measured by the harmonised indicator compared to the national one stems from a larger contribution of service prices, particularly reflecting the rapid price increases in hospitality and accommodation services. This is due to the greater weight of services in the harmonised basket, which also includes foreign tourist consumption. The narrowing of the difference in July was mainly due to lower contributions from inflation in industrial goods and food prices, which turned negative (industrial goods) or further increased their negative contribution (food), according to the HNB.
