Taylor Swift Eras Tour Isn’t the Only One Causing Inflation

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said Tuesday that Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is not the only cause of high inflation across the eurozone.

Lagarde said that while services inflation remained high last month in the 20-nation bloc, which coincided with the European leg of Swift’s sold-out tour, the situation could not be blamed on just one performer.

“You know, it’s not just Taylor Swift,” Lagarde told CNBC’s Sara Eisen in Sintra, Portugal. “Others are coming too.”

Lagarde was responding to a question about whether Swift’s trip would boost services inflation, one of the measures closely watched by the ECB.

The economic impact of Swift’s sold-out tour has been well documented and comes amid concerns that central banks may not be out of the woods yet in their fight against inflation.

Terms like “Swiftflation” and “Swiftonomics” have emerged in the last year following the rise in spending on services such as hotelflights and restaurants around her shows. Analysts have even suggested that the impact on key UK inflation indicators during her London dates could boost Bank of England to delay expected to cut interest rates in September.

However, increased consumer spending on other major music tours, such as those by Bruce Springsteen, P!nk and Sting, is also expected to boost the economy.

“Services is a difficult issue,” Lagarde noted, adding that “the jury is still out” on whether that attachment will last.

Services inflation in the euro area remains stable at 4.1% in JuneCore inflation, which excludes the volatile impact of energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, remained at 2.9% month-on-month, slightly higher than the 2.8% economists had forecast, the European Union’s statistics agency said early Tuesday.

Meanwhile, headline inflation eased to 2.5% in June, down from 2.6% in May, in line with expectations of economists polled by Reuters.

Largarde was speaking at the ECB’s annual monetary policy conference, where global central banks gather to discuss the inflation outlook and the future path of interest rates.

She added that the ECB had now made “very good progress” in containing inflation, but noted that there were still many uncertainties.

“We are very far down that deflationary path,” she said. “We are in a slow recovery that started in the first quarter and we expect it to continue.”

European Central Bank interest rate cut last month for the first time in nearly five years, cutting its key interest rate to 3.75% from a record 4%. Analysts now looking forward The ECB is set to cut interest rates twice more this year, in September and December.

— CNBC’s Jenni Reid contributed to this report.