Mubasher: Annual inflation in the euro area (EA) fell to 1.4% last month from 1.5% in December, data released on Friday showed.

On a year-on-year basis, inflation is up from 1.3% in January 2018, according to the statistical office of the European Union (EU), the Eurostat.

As for the EU, inflation registered 1.5% in January 2019 down from 1.6% in December 2018 and January 2018.

Greece recorded the lowest annual inflation rate at 0.5% in January 2019, followed closely by Croatia and Portugal with 0.6% each, the data showed. On the other hand, Romania registered the highest annual inflation rate last month at 3.2%, followed by Latvia with 2.9%, while Estonia and Hungary both recorded 2.8%.

Month-on-month, annual inflation was down across sixteen EU member States, while five remained stable, and seven witnessed a rise in inflation.

"In January 2019, the highest contribution to the annual euro area inflation rate came from services (+0.70 percentage points, pp), followed by food, alcohol & tobacco (+0.36 pp), energy (+0.26 pp) and non-energy industrial goods (+0.06 pp)," the Eurostat said.

By 10:32 am GMT, the EUR/USD edged 0.01% lower to $1.1335. Right after the data release, the euro was mostly unchanged.