Euro area inflation up to 2.4 percent

[News_Editor]

Euro area inflation up to 2.4 percent

2011-03-16 20:42:33 GMT+7 (ICT)

BRUSSELS (BNO NEWS) -- The European Union (EU) on Wednesday announced that the 17-country Euro area annual inflation was 2.4 percent in February, up from 2.3 percent in January.

A year ago, the inflation rate stood at 0.8 percent, while February's monthly inflation was 0.4 percent, according to the report released by the EU's statistical office Eurostat.

Meanwhile the EU's annual inflation, which includes all 27 member states, was 2.8 percent, unchanged compared with the previous month. A year earlier the rate was 1.5 percent, while its monthly inflation was at 0.4 percent.

In February, the lowest annual rates were observed in Ireland (0.9 percent), Sweden (1.2 percent) and France (1.8 percent), and the highest in Romania (7.6 percent), Estonia (5.5 percent) and Bulgaria (4.6 percent). Compared with January, annual inflation rose in fifteen Member States, remained stable in three and fell in eight.

The lowest 12-month averages up to February were registered in Ireland (-1.1 percent), Latvia (0.0 percent) and the Netherlands (1.2 percent), and the highest in Romania (6.5 percent), Greece (5.0 percent) and Hungary (4.4 percent).

The report also showed that the main components with the highest annual rates in February were transport (5.7 percent), housing (4.9 percent) and alcohol & tobacco (3.5 percent), while the lowest annual rates were observed for clothing (-2.6 percent), communications (-0.4 percent) and recreation & culture (0.0 percent).

Concerning the detailed sub-indices, fuels for transport (+0.62 percentage points), heating oil (+0.23), electricity (+0.11) and gas (+0.10) had the largest upward impacts on the headline rate, while garments (-0.25) and telecommunications (-0.09) had the biggest downward impacts.

The main components with the highest monthly rates were recreation & culture (0.9 percent), food, housing, transport and hotels & restaurants (all 0.5 percent), while the lowest were clothing (-0.5 percent), alcohol & tobacco (0.0 percent), health and education (both 0.1 percent). I

n particular, package holidays (+0.06 percentage points), accommodation services and heating oil (+0.03 each) had the largest upward impacts, while garments (-0.03), restaurants & cafés and footwear (-0.02 each) had the biggest downward impacts.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-03-16