Italy inflation surges to 5.4% as economy stalls

Italian inflation rose 5.4 percent in October from a year earlier as the economy stalled in the third quarter, Italy's statistics agency Istat said Friday.

The jump in inflation -- up from 4.2 percent in September -- was due to rising energy, food and transport prices, the agency said.

"The acceleration in inflation is mainly due to the rise in energy prices, from +22.6 percent in September to +31.4 percent in October, which remains influenced by the international geopolitical context," Istat said.

The surge in inflation since the Middle East war has triggered numerous demonstrations in Italy against the higher cost of living.

Preliminary official data out on Friday also showed that Italy's gross domestic product (GDP) stagnated in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter.

This virtually flat growth (+0.02 percent) is slightly below the forecasts published by Factset and Bloomberg, which were expecting GDP to expand by 0.1 percent in the third quarter.

In the second quarter of 2026, GDP had increased by 0.2 percent, and by 0.3 percent in the first quarter.

ING analysts said in a statement that the result "casts doubt about the attainability" of the government's one percent growth target.

Earlier this month, the Bank of Italy had revised upward its growth forecast for Italian GDP in 2026, to 0.9 percent from 0.6 percent, saying geopolitical factors had turned out to be less severe than expected.