EU inflation down to 0.6% in May 2014 – Eurostat
Euro zone annual inflation was 0.5 per cent in May, down from 0.7 per cent a month earlier, and the annual inflation in the EU as a whole fell to 0.6 per cent from 0.8 per cent, European Union’s statistics board Eurostat said on June 16.
A year earlier, inflation was 1.4 per cent in the euro zone and 1.6 per cent in the EU as a whole, Eurostat said. In May, both the euro area and the EU28 reported deflation of 0.1 per cent.
The lowest annual rates in May were observed in Greece (2.1 per cent deflation), Bulgaria (1.8 per cent) and Portugal (0.3 per cent inflation), and the highest in Austria (1.5 per cent inflation), Luxembourg (1.4 per cent) and Romania (1.3 per cent).
In monthly terms, 16 countries reported deflation in May and four countries reported no change, with consumer prices rising in seven more countries (no data for May was available for the UK).
Bulgaria reported last week monthly deflation of 0.5 per cent in May, the fourth month of deflation so far this year – with only April seeing an increase in the consumer price index – and the eighth month of decline over the past year.
(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 0.5 per cent deflation for the month and two per cent inflation on an annual basis.)
(Photo: Evangelos Vlasopoulos/sxc.hu)
