Africa-Press – South-Africa. South African producer prices rose less than expected last month on slowing fuel inflation that’s expected to ease further in December.
The annual rate declined to 4.6% in November — lower than all eight estimates by economists in a Bloomberg survey — from 5.8% in October, according to data published Thursday by Pretoria-based Statistics South Africa.
The median forecast in the poll was 5.1%.
The easing in producer inflation — an early indicator of movements in consumer-goods prices — was helped by big drop in the cost of coke, petroleum, chemical, rubber and plastic products, along with slowing food inflation.
Diesel prices fell 5.4% from a year earlier, while petrol inflation slowed by 11.7 percentage points from the previous month to 3.7%, the Statistics South Africa data showed.
A further reprieve is expected in December: the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy announced earlier this month that the retail cost of 95 octane gasoline fell by almost 65 cents a litre, and the wholesale diesel price by more than R2.35 a litre.
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