Brussels, 02/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - The annual inflation rate stood at 0.1% in the eurozone in November, unchanged from October, according to a flash estimate published by the statistical office of the EU (Eurostat) on Wednesday 2 December.
Looking at the main components for eurozone inflation, food, alcohol and tobacco are expected to see the highest annual rate in November (1.5%), followed by services (1.1%), non-energy industrial goods (0.5%) and energy (-7.3%).
This stagnating level of inflation has pushed the ECB to relax its accommodative monetary policy once again. Several options are open to the Governing Council of the ECB, which is to meet this Thursday 3 December. It could beef up its quantitative easing (QE) programme for the massive buyback of public and private debt securities, by deciding to acquire new categories of securities, larger quantities of securities or over a longer term, as the current period runs until September 2016. The ECB could also drop the deposit facility rate further. This is already in negative figures, meaning that banks are having to pay to deposit their cash for the very short term. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)