The producer price index (PPI) recorded a dip to 3.7 percent in March.
This represent a 1.8 percentage point decrease relative to the 5.5 percent recorded in February.
The producer inflation index measures the average change overtime in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services.
The deputy government statistician in charge of operations, Anthony Amuzu explained that, this decline in the inflation was due to the declines in the PPI for all the sectors.
The inflation for the mining and quarry sub-sector decreased by 3.4 percentage points over the February rate of 9.2 percent to record 5.8 percent in March.
Amuzu noted that, this was due to marginal decreases in the price of gold in the world market and also to base drift effect.
For decreases in the manufacturing sub-sector, he observed that “this was due to decreases in prices of petroleum products in March 2018. And also there was a base drift effect as well.”
The manufacturing sub-sector decreased by 1.8 percentage point to record 4.2 percent. This constitutes more than two-thirds of total industry.
During the month, six out the sixteen major groups in the manufacturing sub-sector recorded inflation rates higher than the sector average of 6.0 percent.
Manufacture of machinery and equipment recorded the highest inflation rate of 26.1 percent, while manufacturing of food products and beverages recorded the lowest producer price inflation rate of -3.7 percent.
The utilities sub-sector recorded inflation of -0.6 percent, indicating a decrease of 0.6 percent percentage point relative to the 0.0 percent in February.
Amuzu explained that, the decline in utility was mainly due to generation and distribution of electricity.
“There was a marginal decline, even though there was a decrease in the prices of electricity distribution; generation effect almost off-set that. And that is why you didn’t see a huge decline, if not the decline would have been very huge. Because generation cost has gone up.”
By Joshua W. Amlanu
