In August the annual inflation rate (price change in the current month as compared with that of the previous year) in the Eurozone is expected to be 2.3 percent. Such is the forecast by the Statistical Office of the EU (Eurostat). For July this indicator was 2.4 percent.
The Eurozone countries are Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and Finland. The inflation in the Eurozone is calculated by means of the Eurozone´s consumer price index (CPI-EWU).
Eurostat base this forecast on preliminary price data provided by several member states for the respective month under review as well as on preliminary information on energy prices. In a next step information from past periods and preliminary current information are combined in order to forecast the Eurozone´s inflation rate for the current month. According to the experiences of statistics experts this forecast method is accurate to some tenths of a percent. 