Rio de Janeiro – The preliminary official inflation rate, as measured by the Extended National Consumer Price Index – 15 (IPCA-15), stood at 0.10% in March of this year, below the 0.38% preliminary rate of February. This is the IPCA-15’s lowest rate for a March since 2000. The data was released this Friday (23) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The IPCA-15 is at 0.87% in the year and at 2.8% year-over-year.
The decline of 0.94% in rates of local calls and calls from landlines to mobile was what weighed down on the country’s official inflation, according to the preliminary index. All of the communication sector registered a deflation of 0.19% in March’s preliminary rate, the sharpest among the nine expenditure groups included in the IPCA-15.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
