After a year when the annual rate of price rises was frequently well below 1%, inflation akin to that seen before the pandemic has returned this year.

In March, a representative “shopping basket” of goods and services cost 2.0% more than it had done a year previously, the national statistics office Statec said on 7 April.

This compares to an annual rate of 0.8% last year and 1.7% in 2019.

If the effect of the New Year sales is stripped out, the inflation rate rose 0.4 percentage points compared to February, mainly due to fuel prices, which were 4.6% higher.