Dairy and wholesale trade push up PPI

Producers prices rose in the December 2007 quarter, with output prices up 1.5 percent and input prices up1.3 percent, Statistics New Zealand said today.

The main driver in the rise of output prices was the dairyproduct manufacturing index, while the wholesale trade index was the most significant contributor to the risein the input index.

In PPI outputs, the dairy product manufacturing outputs index rose 15.0 percent in the December 2007quarter, the largest quarterly rise since the series began in the June 1994 quarter.

This rise in the latestquarter was attributable to higher export prices of milk powder, cheese and butter.

From the December2006 quarter to the December 2007 quarter, the dairy product manufacturing index rose 33.9 percent incontrast to the slight fall of 1.1 percent in the year to the December 2006 quarter.

The overall rise in the PPI outputs index was partly offset by falls in the electricity generation and supplyindex which declined 5.3 percent in the latest quarter.

The overall rise in the PPI inputs index was driven mainly by a 5.0 percent rise in the wholesale trade indexdriven by higher crude oil prices in the mineral, metal and chemical wholesale index.

This is the largestquarterly rise since the June 2006 quarter.

In the year to the December 2007 quarter, the wholesale tradeindex recorded a slight increase of 0.5 percent, compared with higher increases of 12.2 percent in the yearto the December 2006 quarter and 18.0 percent in the year to the December 2005 quarter.

The electricity generation and supply index was the main downward contributor to partly offset the overallrises in both the PPI output and input prices in the latest quarter.In the year to the December 2007 quarter, the PPI outputs index rose 4.0 percent and PPI inputs indexrose 3.4 percent.