The deceleration of items like school monthly tuition fees and food products were responsible for the reduction of March's rate.

The Extended National Consumer Price Index-15 (IPCA-15) changed by 0.40% in March, and was bellow February's rate (0.90%). The prices were collected from February 11th until March 12th and confronted with prices from January 15th until February 10th.

Besides the significant change of school monthly tuition fees, witch dropped down from 8.17% in February to 0.69% in March, other items contributed to month over month deceleration of the rate.

Food products moved from 0.65% to 0.26% and several products showed lower results. For example, carioca beans (from 20.54% to -0.85%), rice (from 1.65% to –0.91%), meat (from 1.17% to –1.91%) and tomatoes (from 4.57% to 1.10%).

Alcohol fuel had a decrease of 8.46% and gasoline, of 0.42% Those items had presented an increase of 1.19% and 0.61% in February, respectively. But bottled gas had the lowest growth, from 1.14% to 0.57%.

Besides those factors, in March there were no significant impacts on family expenses, such as electricity and urban bus fees.

Of the items with an increase between February and March, among food products, the highlights were eggs (from -1.00% to 5.55%), soybean oil (from -5.05% to 4.75%) and ground coffee (from 0.87% to 2.35%). Cigaretts, (from 0.30% to 4.95%), house appliances (from 0.78% to 1.67%), personal hygiene products ( from -0.62% to 1.14%), landline telephones (from 0.07% to 1.60%) and new cars (from 1.38% to 1,71%) stood out too.

As to the area index, in March, the highest result was in Belém (0.86%) and the lowest in Goiânia (–0.01%).

The IPCA-E for first quarter, composed by the cumulative IPCA-15, was 1.99%. The result refers to January (0.68%), February (0.90%) and March (0.40%). In the last twelve months, the rate was 6.31%.

IPCA-15 refers to families with monthly income between one and 40 minimum wages, of any source and comprehends metropolitan areas of Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Recife, São Paulo, Belém, Fortaleza, Salvador and Curitiba besides Brasília and Goiânia. IPCA-15 is measured following the same methodology used on IPCA, which collects  prices during the calendar month. The difference between the indexes lies on the period of price collection.