Lisbon, May 12 (IANS): The Portuguese consumer price index (CPI) recorded an increase in inflation of 1.9 percentage points from March to April 2022, marking the "biggest difference between two consecutive months since January 1985," the National Statistics Institute (INE) has said.

"Since the beginning of 2022, the year-on-year rate of change of the CPI has shown a significant acceleration," the INE was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying.

The categories that showed the largest increases were food and non-alcoholic beverages, housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels, home accessories, domestic equipment, and current housing maintenance, transport, communications, leisure, recreation and culture, restaurants and hotels and miscellaneous goods and services.

According to INE, the largest increase was in education, as a result of increases in tuition fees.

On the other hand, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, 0.4 percentage points lower than in the previous quarter, and 1.2 percentage points lower than in the same quarter of 2021.

Meanwhile, between January and March the number of unemployed people in Portugal was estimated at 308,400.