Industrial producer prices grew 2.3 percent in 2018

Compared with November 2018, industrial producer prices fell by 1.1 percent, with prices on both the domestic and foreign markets declining by 1.1 percent. Compared with December 2017, prices increased by 0.5 percent on the domestic market and dropped by 0.2 percent of the foreign market.

Producer prices on the domestic market have been increasing continually since January 2017, analysts at Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA) said in their analysis of the DZS report on Monday.

Excluding energy prices, industrial producer prices in December remained stable from November and fell by 0.3 percent compared with December 2017.

Broken down by main industrial groupings, in December 2018 compared with the previous month, prices of intermediate goods rose by 0.1 percent, while those of non-durable consumer goods remained unchanged. Energy prices fell by 4.7 percent, prices of capital goods dropped by 0.3 percent and those of durable consumer goods declined by 0.2 percent.

Year on year, energy prices rose by 2.2 percent, prices of intermediate goods increased by 0.6 percent while those of capital goods remained unchanged. On the other hand, prices of consumer non-durables fell by 1.2 percent and those of consumer durables shrank by 1.1 percent.

For the whole of 2018, the annual growth rate of producer prices picked up slightly on the domestic market, reaching 2.3 percent from 2.1 percent in 2017, RBA said.

Excluding energy prices, producer prices increased by a mere 0.1 percent year on year.

A considerable contribution to the price increase in 2018 came from higher energy prices, which increased by 7.2 percent year on year, the bank said.

Prices of intermediate and capital goods increased, while those of durable and non-durable consumer goods fell.