Eurozone inflation accelerated to 1.4% YoY in January 2020 from 1.3% YoY in December. This is the biggest acceleration since April last year.

Meanwhile, the inflation in the European Union reported an increase of 1.7% YoY in January 2020, compared with 1.6% YoY in December, adds the data of Eurostat. This is also a nine-month high.

The lowest annual inflation rates were recorded in Italy (0.4%), Cyprus (0.7%), Denmark and Portugal (0.8% each). The highest annual inflation rates were reported in Hungary (4.7%), Romania (3.9%), the Czech Republic and Poland (both 3.8%), as well as Bulgaria (3.4%).

In Belgium, inflation also stood at 1.4% in January, against +0.9% in December 2019.

On a monthly basis, annual inflation rates fell in five Member States, remained unchanged in five and increased in eighteen.

In January, the largest contribution to the annual inflation rate in the Eurozone came from the services sector (+0.68 percentage points), followed by food, alcohol, and tobacco (+0.40 percentage points), energy (+0.19 percentage points) and non-energy industrial goods (+0.08 percentage points).