The annual rate of change in core inflation has been consistently below 1% over the past year, with the latest reading for March 2015 at 0.6%, their lowest levels since the start of the series in 1997.
A low reading for core inflation for such a prolonged period of time indicates that it is not only temporary factors that are at work: underlying demand weakness also plays a significant role, as well as of course contained wage pressures and structural reforms undertaken during the same period.