Pretoria - The Producer Price Index (PPI) for the month of March slowed down to an annual 5.3 percent compared to last month, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) announced on Thursday.
This is 2 percent lower than February's annual rate of 7.3 percent.
Stats SA said this could be explained in the rate of change in the PPI for basic metals (from 42.1 percent in February to 40.2 percent in March), food at manufacturing (from 10.9 percent to 9.4 percent), agricultural products (from 6 percent to -2.1 percent) and mining and quarrying (from 5.9 percent to -10.5 percent).
Stats SA said the decrease was partially counteracted by an increase in the annual rate of change for electricity and other manufactures.
From February to March 2009 the PPI for domestic output increased by 0,1 percent. This was due to monthly contributions from increases in the price indices for other manufactures.
The annual rate of change in the PPI for exported commodities is lower at 0,0 percent at March 2009.
"This rate is 1.6 percentage points lower than the corresponding annual rate of 1,6 percent at February 2009," said Stats SA.
Stats SA announced the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a method used by the Reserve Bank to measure inflation, dropped slightly to 8.5 percent in March.
This is 0.1 of a percentage point lower than the corresponding annual rate of 8.6 percent recorded in February 2009.
