Australia's inflationary expectations remained unchanged at 3.2% in March, the latest Melbourne Institute Survey of Consumer Inflationary Expectations showed Thursday. But the proportion of consumers expecting inflation to be within the central bank's 2%-3% band, eased to 18.6% from 21.7% in February.

Michael Chua, a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute said, "This month's report suggests that consumers have factored-in the latest 0.25 per cent rise in the official interest rate as early as February, and given the favorable quarterly economic growth of 0.9 per cent released by the ABS, more consumers expects upward pressure on prices."