April 2015: annual inflation at 0.0% in the euro area

USPA NEWS - Euro area annual inflation was 0.0% in April 2015, up from -0.1% in March. In April 2014 the rate was 0.7%. European Union annual inflation was also 0.0% in April 2015, up from -0.1% in March. A year earlier the rate was 0.8%.

In April 2015, negative annual rates were observed in twelve Member States. The lowest annual rates were registered in Greece (-1.8%), Cyprus (-1.7%), Bulgaria and Poland (both -0.9%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Malta (1.4%) and Austria (0.9%). Compared with March 2015, annual inflation fell in nine Member States, remained stable in one and rose in seventeen. The largest upward impacts to euro area annual inflation came from restaurants & cafés (+0.10 percentage points), rents (+0.08 pp) and vegetables (+0.07 pp), while fuels for transport (-0.42 pp), heating oil (-0.17 pp) and gas (-0.07 pp) had the biggest downward impacts.

On the other hand, seasonally adjusted GDP rose by 0.4% in both the euro area (EA19) and the EU28 during the first quarter of 2015, compared with the previous quarter, according to flash estimates published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. In the fourth quarter of 2014, GDP grew by 0.3% in the euro area and by 0.4% in the EU28. Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, seasonally adjusted GDP rose by 1.0% in the euro area and by 1.4% in the EU28 in the first quarter of 2015, after +0.9% and +1.3% respectively in the previous quarter.

During the first quarter of 2015, GDP in the United States increased by 0.1% compared with the previous quarter (after +0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2014). Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, GDP grew by 3.0% (after +2.4% in the previous quarter). In the US, the increase in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and private inventory investment that were partly offset by negative contributions from exports, nonresidential fixed investment, and state and local government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.