Euro zone inflation dipped last month, data showed today, entering a soft patch that most economists expect will last for at least a year and keep the European Central Bank on hold.<\/p>\n
Price growth in the 21 countries that share the euro slipped to its lowest level since September 2024, dropping to 1.7% in January, weighed down by a fall in energy prices. The reading was in line with economists’ forecasts.<\/p>\n
But a key measure of underlying inflation that strips out volatile items such as energy, food, alcohol and tobacco unexpected edged down to 2.2% from 2.3% in December, as prices in the services sector continued to ease.<\/p>\n
Taken together, the readings were unlikely to trigger any immediate move by the ECB, which is expected to keep interest rates unchanged tomorrow and for the remainder of the year.<\/p>\n
The euro zone’s central bank expects inflation to slightly undershoot its 2% target this year and next before heading back to it in 2028.<\/p>\n
Inflation has been hovering around 2% for at least a year after a wave of price hikes fuelled by the economy’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which pushed up fuel costs.<\/p>\n
Economists are split over whether the ECB’s next move will be a cut or a hike, with some policymakers recently saying both moves are equally likely.<\/p>\n
A recent appreciation of the euro against the dollar, partly a response to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable policymaking and worries about the Federal Reserve’s independence, has fuelled some market talk about a rate cut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Euro zone inflation dipped last month, data showed today, entering a soft patch that most economists expect will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-280376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}