In March, headline inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), remained the same as in February at 8.5 percent. Inflation was unchanged in several categories, including food and non-alcoholic beverages (which has the largest weight in the CPI basket) at 5.3 percent, as well as communication and education at 1.9 percent and 10.6 percent, respectively. Movements were mixed across other commodity groups. Increases were registered for alcohol and tobacco (from 10.7 percent to 11.0 percent), housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (from 7.8 percent to 8.0 percent), health (from 2.9 percent to 3.0 percent) and recreation and culture (from 6.6 percent to 7.0 percent). However, these increases were fully offset by lower inflation for clothing and footwear (from 9.1 percent to 8.0 percent), furnishing, household equipment and routine maintenance (from 8.9 percent to 8.6 percent), transport (from 13.7 percent to 13.6 percent), restaurants and hotels (from 10.5 percent to 9.7 percent) and miscellaneous goods and services (from 7.0 percent to 6.8 percent).

Both the trimmed mean measure of core inflation and inflation excluding administered prices declined, from 8.6 percent to 8.4 percent and from 7.7 percent to 7.6 percent, respectively.