Producer price inflation, UK: April 2023

• Producer input prices rose by 3.9% in the year to April 2023, down from 7.3% in the year to March 2023.
• Producer output (factory gate) prices rose by 5.4% in the year to April 2023, down from 8.5% in the year to March 2023.
• Inputs of metals and non-metallic minerals, and petroleum products provided the largest downward contributions to the change in the annual rates of input and output inflation, respectively.
• While annual producer price inflation rates have been slowing in recent months, the index levels for both input and output prices have been broadly stable since June 2022.
• On a monthly basis, producer input prices fell by 0.3% while output prices showed no movement in aggregate in April 2023.

2. Producer price inflation rates

The annual rate of the output PPI has now been positive for 28 consecutive months, but it has been slowing for the last nine months. It is down 14.3 percentage points from its recent peak of 19.7% in July 2022.

The index levels for both input and output prices have been broadly stable since June 2022 after a period of rapid increase starting in 2021 and continuing into early 2022 (Figure 2). This levelling out, when compared with the rapid increases seen last year, has the effect of creating a fall in the annual inflation rate (Figure 1), as explained in our Beware base effects blog.