OREANDA-NEWS. Euro area annual inflation was 0.0% in March 2016, up from -0.2% in February. In March 2015 the rate was -0.1%. European Union annual inflation was also 0.0% in March 2016, up from -0.1% in February. A year earlier the rate was -0.1%. These figures come from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

In March 2016, negative annual rates were observed in fifteen Member States. The lowest annual rates were registered in Romania (-2.4%), Cyprus (-2.2%) and Bulgaria (-1.9%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Belgium (1.6%), Sweden (1.2%) and Malta (1.0%). Compared with February 2016, annual inflation fell in eleven Member States, remained stable in seven and rose in nine.

The largest upward impacts to euro area annual inflation came from restaurants & cafés (+0.12 percentage points), package holidays (+0.09 pp) and rents (+0.07 pp), while fuels for transport (-0.60 pp), heating oil (-0.23 pp) and gas (-0.10 pp) had the biggest downward impacts.