Central Banks
Euro-Area Prices Slow Less Than Expected, Clouding ECB Cuts
- Consumer prices rose 2.8% from year ago in January; est. 2.7%
- Markets are betting ECB will start lowering rates from April
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Euro-zone inflation eased less than anticipated at the start of the year — testing investor expectations that the European Central Bank will begin lowering interest rates as soon as the spring.
After a pick-up in December driven by base effects, consumer prices rose 2.8% from a year ago in January, Eurostat said Thursday. That’s above the 2.7% median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Core inflation, which omits volatile components such as food and energy, also abated less than envisaged, to 3.3%.