(MENAFN- AFP) Germany's inflation shot to a four-and-a-half year high in February, but analysts predicted Wednesday that it will not convince the European Central Bank to drop its ultra-loose monetary policy.
According to preliminary data by the federal statistics office Destatis consumer prices in Europe's biggest economy rose by 2.2 percent last month, outstripping the ECB's price stability target of 2.0 percent.
The inflation rate, faster than the 1.9 percent recorded in January and the highest since August 2012, was slightly above analysts' forecast.
Soaring inflation has sparked growing calls in Germany for the ECB to wind down its loose monetary policy of historically low interest rates, mass bond-buying and cheap loans to banks.
Germans complain that higher inflation is outpacing the ECB's historic low interest rates, eating up savers' cash reserves in real terms.
They also charge that the ECB's mass buying of government bonds has taken pressure off eurozone neighbours to reform their struggling economies.
So far, monetary policymakers have retorted that their job is to target the average inflation rate in the 19-nation eurozone -- not price increases in any one country -- and that in any case, the energy- and food-driven spike will not usher in higher inflation over the medium term.
- 'Premature' -
"Demands from Germany for the ECB to change its monetary policy miss the mark and are premature," Marcel Fratzscher, head of the DIW Berlin economic think-tank, said in a statement.
Core inflation excluding volatile items like food and energy remains "too low" for the Frankfurt institution to consider exiting monetary stimulus, he went on.
As in the previous two months, February's acceleration in price growth was largely fuelled by a sharp rise in the cost of energy, the Destatis figures showed.
Energy prices jumped by 7.2 percent year-on-year in February after rising by 5.9 percent in January and by 2.5 percent in December.
That was higher than food inflation, up 4.4 percent after 3.2 percent in January, and services, which added just 1.3 percent -- around the same pace as the previous month.
As energy prices have increased in recent months, a bigger year-on-year change has been visible in comparisons against a deep trough they navigated in early 2016.
ECB policymakers have pointed to this effect as the main driver of higher inflation across the eurozone since December -- and predict it will fade away as the year goes on.
"We should not react to individual data points and short-lived increases in inflation," ECB president Mario Draghi told European Parliament lawmakers in early February.
Draghi has repeatedly listed four criteria that have to be met for the ECB to react to increased inflation: it must be durable, self-sustained, evident across the entire eurozone, and likely to last for several months.
By contrast, the recent inflation upswing "should have peaked in February," Commerzbank analyst Marco Wagner argued, as the effect of comparatively higher oil prices "should abate up to the end of the year".
Beyond food and energy, there is little upward pressure on prices in Germany, including from wage increases, he said.
With a similar picture in the rest of the eurozone, "the ECB will remain far short of its target in the foreseeable future," Wagner predicted.
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