Industrial output prices rise 26% in March due to cost of energy

  • Lusa
  • 19 April 2022

"In March, industrial production prices increased 26.3 percent year-on-year, which compares with the 20.9 percent rate observed in February," INE reported this Tuesday.

The industrial production price index recorded a year-on-year growth of 26.3% in March, continuing to be “strongly influenced” by the increase in energy prices and intermediate goods, without which it grew by 7.7%, INE, the country’s national statistics institute said on Tuesday.

“In March, industrial production prices increased 26.3 percent year-on-year, which compares with the 20.9 percent rate observed in February,” INE reported.

According to the statistical institute, “this evolution was particularly influenced by the ‘energy’ grouping, with a growth of 82.4% (60.9% in the previous month) and a contribution of 15.4 percentage points, reflecting the strong impact of the prices of electricity production and oil and its derivatives”.

Excluding this grouping, the change in industrial production prices was 13.4% (12.2% in February).

The grouping of ‘intermediate goods’ made the second largest contribution to the variation of the index, 7.5 percentage points (7.3 percentage points in the previous month), resulting in a variation rate of 20.3% (19.6% in February).

The index of the manufacturing industries section was up by 19.9% year-on-year (16.5% in the previous month), contributing 17.8 percentage points to the change in the total index. The electricity, gas, steam, hot & cold water and air-conditioning industries contributed 8.3 percentage points to the change in the total index, up 103.9% (75.8% in February).

According to INE, excluding this section, the change in industrial production prices stood at 19.6% (16.4% in the previous month).

In monthly terms, in March compared to February, the monthly change in the industrial production price index was 6.2% (1.6% in March 2021), with this change being “determined by the ‘energy’ grouping, whose contribution stood at 4.8 percentage points, associated with a rate of change of 20.2% (changes of 7.4% and 6.1% in February 2022 and March 2021, respectively).”

“Excluding this grouping, industrial output price growth accelerated by 0.4 percentage points to a change of 1.8%,” INE notes.

As for the manufacturing industries’ section, it recorded a monthly increase of 4.0% (1.1% in March 2021) and a contribution of 3.5 percentage points.

Considering the first quarter of 2022, industrial output prices increased by 21.7% (18.4% in the previous quarter), in a “result also strongly determined by the ‘energy’ and ‘intermediate goods’ groupings, without which the total index increased by 6.3% (4.0% in the fourth quarter)”.