Euro zone annual inflation down to 2% in January
Euro zone annual inflation was two per cent in January, down from 2.2 per cent a month, European Union’s statistics board Eurostat said on February 28. The annual inflation in the EU as a whole in January was 2.1 per cent, down from 2.3 per cent in December.
A year earlier, inflation was 2.7 per cent in the euro zone and 2.9 per cent in the EU as a whole.
In January 2013, the lowest annual rates were observed in Greece (zero per cent), Portugal (0.4 per cent) and Latvia (0.6 per cent), and the highest in Romania (5.1 per cent), Estonia (3.7 per cent) and the Netherlands (3.2 per cent).
In Bulgaria, monthly inflation was 0.2 per cent in January and the annual figure at the end of the month was 2.6 per cent, according to provisional data.
(This is the harmonised consumer price index used by Bulgaria’s National Statistics Institute to compare inflation to the rest of the EU. The inflation figures calculated using the institute’s own methodology were 0.4 per cent for the month and 4.4 per cent on an annual basis.)
Both the euro zone and the EU as a whole recorded a decline in consumer prices in January, of one per cent and 0.8 per cent, respectively. A total of 17 EU states recorded deflation and two more had consumer prices remain flat in January.
(Illustration: svilen001/sxc.hu)
