Eurozone April PPI Up 1.2% MoM... 37.2% YoY Increase

Customers are shopping at a supermarket in Rome, Italy.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Chun-hee] Producer prices in Europe continued to rise in April. However, the rate of increase significantly slowed due to a base effect following the previous month's surge in energy prices.

On the 2nd (local time), Eurostat announced that the Producer Price Index (PPI) for the Eurozone, consisting of 19 countries using the euro, rose by 1.2% compared to the previous month. This is a sharp decline from the 5.3% increase recorded the previous month, which was driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It is also about half of the 2.3% increase forecasted by market experts.

The April PPI soared 37.2% compared to the same period last year. This figure is lower than both the market forecast of 38.5% and the previous month's 36.9%.

The slowdown in the rate of increase appears to be due to a slight easing of the sharp rise in energy prices that caused the price surge in March. The energy PPI in April decreased by 1.2% compared to the previous month. In contrast, the PPI excluding energy increased by 2.6% month-on-month.

However, on a year-on-year basis, the energy PPI still showed a staggering increase of 99.2%. Correspondingly, the PPI excluding energy rose by only 15.6%.

Eurozone Producer Price Index (PPI) Trend Graph [Image Source=Eurostat]

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