South Korea's headline inflation hit the highest in over 10 years last month due to soaring energy price, statistical office data showed Tuesday, Trend reports citing Xinhua.
The consumer price index (CPI) stood at 106.06 in March, up 4.1 percent from the same month of last year, according to Statistics Korea.
It marked the highest growth in over 10 years since December 2011, hovering above 3 percent for the sixth straight month since October last year.
The headline inflation surpassed the Bank of Korea (BOK)'s mid-term inflation target of 2 percent for 12 months in a row.
To tackle inflationary pressure, the BOK hiked its policy rate by a quarter percentage point to 1.25 percent in January, after raising the rate by 25 basis points in August and November last year.
The March CPI was driven by expensive oil products, the price of which raised the overall inflation by 1.32 percentage points.
Oil products price surged 31.2 percent in March from a year earlier, logging the fastest gain in four months. Prices for gasoline and diesel jumped 27.4 percent and 37.9 percent respectively.
Dubai crude, South Korea's benchmark, averaged 110.9 U.S. dollars per barrel in March, up from 92.4 dollars in the previous month.