Italy producer prices slow down in Jan due to fall in energy prices

(Reuters) – Italian industrial producer prices saw a marked decline in January, slipping back to levels seen in the summer of 2021 in yearly terms due to a decline in energy prices.

National statistics bureau ISTAT said on Friday that prices at factory gates fell 7.5% month-on-month in January, having risen 2.9% in December. Compared with the same month a year earlier prices were up 11.1% in January, easing from a 31.7% leap in December.

“The exceptional monthly decline and the sharp slowdown of the yearly growth of producer prices in the industrial sector … are mainly due to the strong decrease of retail prices on internal energy and gas markets, weighed down by a fall in natural gas prices,” ISTAT said in a note.

Excluding the energy component, prices in the internal market increased 0.5% on a monthly basis, compared with a 9.8% rise in the same month last year.

In the three months from November to the end of January, industrial producer prices grew 0.4% from the previous quarter.

(Reporting by Enrico Sciacovelli and Luca Fratangelo, Editing by Hugh Lawson)