Rome, Jan 17 : Italy's average annual inflation rate in 2023 dropped to 5.7 per cent from the previous year's 8.1 per cent, the highest since the country adopted the euro currency in 1999, the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) said. ISTAT attributed the slowdown largely to a decrease in regulated and unregulated energy prices, which registered a year-on-year decline of 41.6 per cent and 21.1 per cent respectively by the end of 2023, reports Xinhua news agency. Despite the dramatic decrease, the inflation rate was still far beyond Italy's long-term target of 2 per cent. In the fourth quarter of last year, measures to counteract inflation were implemented to reduce consumer prices on a basket of necessities. The annual inflation rate of the last three months in 2023 plunged to an adjusted 1.7 per cent, 0.7 per cent, and 0.6 pe rcent respectively, from the July-September quarter of 5.9 per cent, 5.4 per cent and 5.3 per cent, according to the updated data ISTAT released on Tuesday /IANS