The 3.3% is the lowest monthly rate since the start of the war in Ukraine due to the fall in electricity and fuels

Inflation rate fell to 3.3% in March, 2.7 points lower than in February. It is the lowest since August 2021, due to the evolution of energy prices, which in March last year soared at the start of the war in Ukraine.

According to the advanced data of the consumer price index (CPI) published on Thursday by the National Statistics Institute (INE), this sharp decline in the rate of price rises is due to the fall in electricity and fuels, which rose in March 2022 and are falling this month.

As for core inflation – the general index without unprocessed food and energy products – it fell by one tenth of a percentage point to 7.5%. In monthly terms, prices rose by 0.4% with respect to February, according to this advanced CPI indicator.

The Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs has stressed that inflation in March “is almost three times lower than that recorded a year earlier” and that core inflation has fallen for the first time since last September. “The sustained fall in the price of electricity, thanks to the Iberian solution and the other measures adopted, has been key to Spanish inflation being among the lowest in Europe,” they added.

Inflation began to climb in January last year, when the annual rate started at 6.1%, and reached a peak of 10.8% in July, mainly due to the rise in energy prices, which has been passed on to the rest of the components, especially food.

Since November, the annual rate of inflation has been hovering around 6%, while core inflation has remained at around 7%.

Returning to the advanced data for March, the INE points out that the difference of 4.2 points between the year-on-year rates of core and headline CPI inflation is the largest since August 1986, when core inflation began to be calculated.

This advanced inflation data does not detail the evolution by groups, which will be known on 14 April when the INE publishes the final data.