OREANDA-NEWS. Euro area annual inflation was -0.1% in May 2016, up from -0.2% in April. In May 2015 the rate was 0.3%.European Union annual inflation was also -0.1% in May 2016, up from -0.2% in April. A year earlier the rate was 0.3%. These figures come from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

In May 2016, negative annual rates were observed in sixteen Member States. The lowest annual rates were registered in Romania (-3.0%), Bulgaria (-2.5%) and Cyprus (-1.9%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Belgium (1.6%), Malta (1.0%) and Sweden (0.8%). Compared with April 2016, annual inflation fell in nine Member States, remained stable in eight and rose in eleven.

The largest upward impacts to euro area annual inflation came from restaurants & cafés (+0.12 percentage points), rents and tobacco (both +0.07 pp), while fuels for transport (-0.53 pp), heating oil (-0.20 pp) and gas (-0.13 pp) had the biggest downward impacts.