Euroarea annual inflation accelerates to 1.1 pct in December, on rise in transport prices

Euro area’s annual inflation accelerated in December. According to Eurostat, the currency bloc’s inflation came in at 1.1 percent year-on-year in December, as compared with 0.6 percent in November. In the December of 2015, the inflation rate came in at 0.2 percent. In European Union, annual inflation came in at 1.2 percent in December, as compared with 0.6 percent in November. In December 2015, the inflation pace was 0.2 percent in EU.

In euro area, negative annual rates were seen in Ireland, which registered -0.2 percent. On the other hand, highest annual rates were seen in Estonia, Belgium and Latvia, which recorded inflation of 2.4 percent, 2.2 percent and 2.1 percent respectively.

Inflation in euro area was driven by rises in prices of transport, heating oil and vegetables, which contributed 0.21 percentage points, 0.05 percentage points and 0.07 percentage points to the headline figure. On the other hand telecommunications, gas and personal care products had the biggest downward impacts, subtracting 0.05 percentage points, 0.10 percentage points and 0.04 percentage points respectively from the headline print.