Pretoria - The Producer Price Index (PPI) in April slowed to 6.6 percent, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said on Thursday.
"This rate is 0.7 of a percentage point lower than the corresponding annual rate of 7.3 percent in March 2011," Stats SA said of the PPI, which is the price of goods leaving factories as well as mines.
The lower rate, said Stats SA, could be due to decreases in the annual rate of change in mining and quarrying, basic metals, other manufactures, beverages and non-metallic mineral products.
However, the decreases were partially counteracted by increases in the annual rate of change in electricity, products of petroleum and coal as well as metal products.
In April, analysts had expected prices to have accelerated due to higher commodity prices. A Bloomberg survey had expected it to ease to 7.1 percent.
