Prices were up 0.5 percent on the month, the Federal Statistical Office said in a preliminary estimate. Final data are due April 12 though they rarely change significantly.
Germany has the biggest economy in the 17-nation eurozone.
The latest figures show that eurozone consumer prices rose 2.4 percent in the year to February — above the ECB’s target of “close to but below” 2 percent.
The ECB has signaled that it will raise its interest rates next week after keeping them at a record-low 1 percent since May 2009. Raising interest rates is a means of fighting inflation but can dampen economic growth.
UniCredit economist Alexander Koch noted that Japan’s earthquake and tsunami caused only a temporary drop in oil prices, which were pushed higher by global economic growth and unrest in the Middle East.
“The sideways trend in inflation since the beginning of the year is definitely no sign of abating inflationary pressures and will not convince the ECB to back away again from its tightening bias,” Koch said.
“Inflationary pressure has been mounting and should translate into a broad upward trend in underlying inflation in the course of this year,” he added.
Earlier on Tuesday, a survey showed that fears of inflation were weighing on German consumer confidence, along with worries about Middle East unrest.
The GfK research group said its forward-looking confidence indicator stood at 5.9 points for April, down slightly from a revised value of 6 points in March.
While overall consumer confidence remains very high, the potential impact of the events in Japan were not taken into account in the period the survey was conducted, the group said.
