Annual inflation in Luxembourg climbed to 1.7% in January 2017. Compared to December 2016, inflation went down by 0.6%, which can mostly be explained by price reductions due to winter sales. These figures were revealed by STATEC on Friday evening.

Luxembourg’s statistics office expects inflation to maintain its high level in the coming months, especially due to the recovery of oil prices. Other goods and services excluding oil prices are meanwhile rising by 0.3% on average.

While clothing and shoe ware prices did go down by 15.4%, this is still a 3.2% rise as compared to the previous year. Oil prices in general on the other hand went up by 13.2% compared to January 2016, of which heating oil prices went up by a whopping 44.1% in the same period.

The rise of 0.3% in goods and services excluding oil prices was mainly due to services becoming more expensive. Medical services played an important role in this regard, with doctor consultations becoming 9.2% more expensive and retirement and care home services rising by 1.8%.

Annual inflation therefore goes up from 1.1% in December 2016 to 1.7% in January 2017. After the wage indexation that took effect in Luxembourg beginning of 2017, STATEC is suggesting that this rate of inflation could trigger a new wage indexation by 2018.