Australia Inflation Steady At 3.4%

(RTTNews) - Australia's consumer price inflation remained unchanged in February, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed on Wednesday.

The monthly consumer price index posted an annual increase of 3.4 percent in February, which was slightly weaker than economists' forecast of 3.5 percent. The rate has been 3.4 percent in December and January.

The most significant contributors to the annual increase were housing, food and non-alcoholic beverages, alcohol and tobacco and insurance and financial services.

As the CPI inflation is often impacted by items with volatile price changes like automotive fuel, fruit and vegetables, and holiday travel, it can be helpful to exclude these items from the headline figure to provide a view of underlying inflation, ABS head of prices statistics Michelle Marquardt said. Excluding volatile items, underlying inflation slowed to 3.9 percent from 4.1 percent in January.