German producer prices at record high amid Ukraine war
BERLIN (Reuters) -German producer prices rose 30.9% on the year in March, reflecting the effects of the war in Ukraine for the first time, data from the Federal Statistics Office showed on Wednesday.
March’s figures mark six consecutive months of increasingly steeper increases, mainly due to rising energy prices, according to the statistics office.
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“These results should already contain first implications deriving from Russia’s attack on Ukraine,” said the office.
The jump in factory gate costs, considered a leading indicator for consumer prices, was the biggest since records started in 1949, the statistics office said.
The average expectation among analysts polled by Reuters was for an annual increase of 28.2%. February had seen an increase of 25.9% on the year.
Producer prices registered a jump of 4.9% compared to the previous month.
Energy prices were up 83.8% from March 2021, the statistics office said. The main driver of that increase was the strong price increase in natural gas, which was up 144.8% on the year.
Stripping out energy prices, producer prices rose 14% year on year.
(Reporting by Miranda Murray, editing by Emma Thomasson)