Producer prices post highest growth in nearly 9 years

September 13, 2017

TOKYO- Japan's producer prices rose 2.9 percent from a year earlier in August, marking the highest growth since October 2008 excluding the impact of the consumption tax increase in April 2014, the Bank of Japan said Wednesday.

The August producer price index came to 98.8 against the 2015 base of 100, in its eight-month rising streak, the central bank said.

The hefty increase in the index reflects a 12.5 percent jump in petroleum and coal product prices, a 16.8 percent surge in prices of copper and other nonferrous metals and an 11.2 percent rise in steel prices.

Nonferrous metal prices went up on speculation that demand from China would increase, BOJ officials said.

Of the 744 items surveyed, prices rose for 390 and fell for 256. Items with higher prices outnumbered those with lower prices for the fifth consecutive month.

"It's hard to make price predictions as yet," an official of the BOJ's Research and Statistics Department said, pointing to uncertainties over the course of the Chinese economy and about effects of geopolitical risks, particularly the North Korean crisis, and the US economy's damage from hurricanes. Jiji Press