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German inflation falls back to negative level

Xinhua, May 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

The annual inflation in Germany falls back to a negative level in April, said German federal statistics office Destatis on Friday, confirming its previous estimation late last month.

Compared with the same month of last year, Germany's consumer price index (CPI) declined by 0.1 percent in April, Destatis said. In March, the annual inflation stood at 0.3 percent.

According to Destatis, a downward effect on inflation was mainly made by sharp drops of oil products prices.

Measured with the harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP), the European Union's standard, German annual inflation fell to minus 0.3 percent in April, far below the European Central Bank (ECB)'s maintenance target of "below, but close to 2 percent."

The Frankfurt-based central bank has cut interest rates in the euro zone to ultra-low levels and launched a quantitative easing program worth more than 1 trillion euros (about 1.13 trillion U.S. dollars) in a bid to prevent the common currency area from falling into a dangerous spiral of deflation.

However, the policies were criticized by several German politicians, including the country's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who argued that ECB's policies eroded the wealth of German savers. Endit