Italy producer price inflation eases further in February

Rome: Italian industrial producer prices (PPI) posted a second month-on-month drop in February and the annual rate slowed, data showed on Thursday, as price pressure eased for both energy and non-energy goods.

National statistics bureau ISTAT reported that prices at factory gates fell 1.0% month-on-month in February, after plunging by 7.5% in January.

Compared with the same month a year earlier, prices were up 9.6% in February from an 11.1% rise in January.

The slowdown was “mainly due to the declines in prices for energy products, which are more pronounced in the domestic market and in the non-euro area,” ISTAT said, while noting that the price of intermediate goods was also falling.

In the domestic manufacturing industry price growth continued to slow down in almost all sectors on a year-on-year basis, it added.

Excluding energy, prices in the internal market edged up 0.1% month-on-month, while the year-on-year rate slowed to 8.7% from 9.7% in January.

In the three months to February the overall PPI decreased 2.1% from the previous quarter, with a steeper 2.9% fall in the domestic market. (Reporting by Alberto Chiumento and Enrico Sciacovelli, editing by Gavin Jones)