Spain March inflation lowest in nine months

MADRID - Reuters

Consumer prices rose 2.4 percent year-on-year in March. AP photo

Spanish inflation in March fell to its lowest level since July, data showed on Friday, as price rises slowed on the back of sliding consumer spending and lower fuel costs.

Consumer prices rose 2.4 percent year-on-year in March, according to data from the National Statistics Institute, compared with 2.8 percent in February and in line with a Reuters poll forecast.

“We expect the moderation in prices to continue over the coming months,” Economy Secretary Fernando Jimenez Latorre said in a conference on the data.

The consumer price index leapt to 3.4 percent in September after the government increased value-added taxes by three percentage points as part of austerity measures to decrease its public deficit, one of the highest in the euro zone.

Spain’s economy is deep in its second recession since 2009 after a burst property bubble five years ago gutted domestic demand and left millions out of work.

According to the final price data on Friday, Spanish European Union-harmonised prices rose 2.6 percent from a year earlier, down from 2.9 percent in February.

Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, was 2.3 percent year on year, unchanged from a year earlier.