Capacity utilisation has risen over the past two years for manufacturing and services. Indicators suggest that it is still increasing in the services sector, and that price pressures along the production chain have strengthened further. On food prices, I would like to make a small incidental remark. Food prices appear to be among the most important factors affecting the inflation perception of people.
In Germany, as in other countries, the strong attention paid to food prices was certainly also supported by the press coverage of the issue. The overall contribution of food prices to actual inflation, however, is limited by their weight in the overall euro area HICP, which is approximately 12% for processed food and 8% for unprocessed food.