Oliver Mangan: Widening profit margins helping drive underlying inflation

Demand has outpaced supply in many sectors following the pandemic. Pent-up demand was unleashed at a time of major disruptions to supply chains and capacity constraints in economies.

There was a welcome sharp fall in the headline rate of inflation in the eurozone for March as the sharp jump in energy prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine early last year started to drop out of the annual calculations.  

The annual rate of inflation across the eurozone fell to 6.9% last month from 8.5% in February, and is now well below the peak level of 10.6% hit last October.