May 2018 producer prices up by 2.9 pct year-on-year

Excluding energy prices, industrial producer prices remained unchanged month-on-month in May, and inched up by 0.2 percent compared to May 2017.

By industry sectors, the largest month-on-month change was in energy prices, which were up 4.1 percent. The prices of capital products also grew by 0.3 percent, and intermediary products by 0.1 percent. The prices of durable consumer goods dropped by 0.3 percent, with non-durable goods dropping 1.2 percent.

Compared to May 2017, energy prices were up by 12.4 percent.

By sector, the largest year-on-year increase was 7.5 percent in mining and oil extraction, followed by processing industry (3.0 percent) and energy supply (0.7 percent).

"Considering the continuation of positive year-on-year rates of growth in producer prices, which might indicate future inflationary trends, in the coming months we can expect positive pressures to producer prices to continue. Meanwhile, the continued recovery of domestic and foreign demand will create pressures to the growth of industrial producer prices," analysts of the Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA) said in their report.

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