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IRELAND HAS THE lowest annual rate of inflation in Europe, new figures reveal.
Standing at 1 per cent in July of this year, this is far below the highest rate of inflation, which is held by Estonia at 5.3 per cent.
Also with low interest rates are Slovenia (1.1 per cent) and Sweden (1.6 per cent).
Inflation fell in 16 member states, rose in nine and remained stable in two compared with June 2011.
The figures were released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.
Annual inflation in the Euro area was down from 2.7 per cent in June to 2.5 per cent in July 2011, although a year earlier the rate was 1.7 per cent.
Overall, annual EU inflation was 2.9 per cent in July 2011, down from 3.1 per cent in June.
In Ireland, monthly inflation was 0.2 per cent in July 2011, while it was 0.6 per cent overall in Europe.
Transport (5.5 per cent) and housing (5 per cent) saw the highest annual rises in inflation, followed by alcohol and tobacco (2.9 per cent).
Clothing (-2.9 per cent), communications (1.6 per cent) and recreation and culture (0.4 per cent) saw the lowest.
When it came to monthly rises in inflation, recreation and culture (1.2 per cent), hotels and restaurants (1.1 per cent) and housing and transport (0.6 per cent) showed the highest figures whereas clothing (-14.2 per cent) showed negative growth.
Good news! This means we’re regaining lost competitiveness and will surely translate eventually into more exports, more FDI, more tourists etc. It all means more jobs in the end.
That’s funny!
Inflation is low here because everything is already so expensive
Too bad unemployment is on the rise, alcoholism is on the rise, illiteracy is on the rise, violent crime is on the rise and the median age of catholic priests is on the rise.
Your very positive eh Patrick?
Yeah Patrick, unlike the median age of the children abused by said catholic priests!
@patrick moon. I get all the others except the priest. Surely it is a good thing if priests are getting older and then die out. Perhaps that’s what happened the dinosaurs. They raped and buggered all around them until they dropped dead.
arent you supposed to be ‘enlightened’ Patrick?
Restaurants up? I bought a nice carvery lunch today for… 6.25 !! A litle less than half of what I would have paid in 2007.
Booze up? There seem to be a lot more drinks offers of late.
While this article is interesting, perhaps it’s good to also look at the trends over a slightly longer term, e.g. a year or two.
Is it a case of goos and services sold via a free market getting cheaper since 2007 (restaurants, bars, clothing), while things provided by a closed shop (transport) are getting ever more expensive?
Could someone please answer this for me. How if we are in a deflationary cycle is inflation still rising?
Well we had our inflation during the boom and we passed out most of Europe in the process. Credit expansion was the basis of the post 2002 boom. Now we’re readjusting.
Just to ad, we inflated wages as they were index linked to housing which was fueled by credit. At the same time other things like energy were inflating at a slower pace than the housing driven Irish economy. When housing bust we got a big dose of deflation but the basics like energy/food never stopped increasing.
*goods and services, obviously. But maybe goos are cheaper too.
Remember all that money effectively being printed by the ECB?
have your say