OREANDA-NEWS. Euro area annual inflation was 0.3% in January 2016, up from 0.2% in December 2015. In January 2015 the rate was -0.6%. European Union annual inflation was 0.2% in January 2016, stable compared with December. A year earlier the rate was -0.5%. These figures come from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

In January 2016, negative annual rates were observed in ten Member States. The lowest annual rates were registered in Poland (-1.7%), Romania (-1.5%) and Cyprus (-1.1%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Belgium (1.8%), Austria (1.4%) and Sweden (1.3%). Compared with December 2015, annual inflation fell in twelve Member States, remained stable in two and rose in fourteen.

The largest upward impacts to euro area annual inflation came from restaurants & cafés (+0.10 percentage points), tobacco and fruit (+0.06 pp each), while fuels for transport (-0.28 pp), heating oil (-0.18 pp) and gas (-0.11 pp) had the biggest downward impacts.