The year-on-year reading for December was for a decline of 2.3%, marking the sharpest year-on-year drop since March 2024. And overall in 2025, the annual average for German import prices showed a decrease of 0.3% compared to 2024.
The breakdown shows the same story that it has been all year, that being the biggest drag on the overall development was the decline in energy prices. That was the same case for the monthly reading as well, with December reflecting a 4.6% drop in energy prices compared to November. If you strip that out, import prices were actually up 0.3% on the month instead.
And looking over to the year-on-year estimate, it would just be a 0.3% decline if you exclude energy prices from the calculations.
It’s the same as when we look at the annual average too. For some context, the 0.3% drop in 2025 isn’t as bad as the 1.2% drop in 2024 and 6.5% decline in 2023 before that. But when you strip out energy prices, the import price index was 0.7% higher on average in 2025 than in the previous year.
The overall breakdown shows that prices for capital goods were also below the 2024 level in 2025 (-0.2%). In contrast, agricultural goods (+4.3%), consumer goods (+1.9%), and intermediate goods (+0.3%) were on average more expensive than in the previous year.
