2025 December Inflation Data Assessed by the National Bank

Consumer prices rose by 3.3% year-on-year in December 2025. Relative to the 3.8% observed in November, the annual growth rate of prices fell by 0.5 percentage points, the National Bank of Hungary says on it website

Standing at 3.8%, core inflation fell by 0.3 percentage point. Core inflation excluding indirect tax effects fell to 3.6%. Incoming inflation data was above the projection in the bank's December Inflation Report. In 2025, annual average inflation and core inflation were 4.4 and 4.6%, respectively.

The decline in the annual consumer price index was primarily driven by a decrease in the inflation of fuel and processed food prices. Core inflation, which was lower than in November, was caused primarily by processed foods; this was partly offset by the rising annual price dynamics of market services. Among the Bank’s measures of underlying inflation developments capturing persistent inflationary trends, calculated on a year-on-year basis, the inflation of sticky-price products fell by 0.2 percentage point and stood at 5.2%.

In contrast, core inflation excluding processed food rose to 4.7% and the inflation of tradables and market services excluding the price-reducing effect of the price restrictions at the time of their introduction, rose to 5.7%.

In monthly terms, the price of the representative consumer basket and the core inflation basket grew by 0.1% and 0.3%, respectively. Month-on-month core inflation excluding processed food prices, which better reflect underlying developments, rose by 0.5%. In December, the monthly repricing was higher than the 2017-2020 average for market services and tradables, while for food, it was lower. MNB's indicators calculated on an annualised 3-month-on-3-month comparison both fell for inflation and core inflation.