U.S. Producer Price Index Up 0.1% In September

By Agence France-Presse The Producer Price Index rose 0.1% in September, and the core rate, which excludes food and energy prices, also rose 0.1%, the Labor Department said Oct. 11. The September Producer Price Index report was in line with Wall Street economists' forecasts. The PPI was lifted by rising energy prices, which increased 0.9% in September. A 0.6% drop in food prices, however, offset the overall gain in producer prices. On a year-on-year basis, the overall PPI for finished goods was down 1.9%, while the core rate was down 0.4%. In August, the PPI was unchanged, while the core rate fell 0.1%. For the first nine months of the year, the PPI rose at a 0.8% annual pace, marginally down from a 0.9% gain over the same period last year. The core rate fell at a 0.4% pace over the first nine months of the year, down from a 1.4% rate a year earlier. The report shows that the overall inflation trend so far this year is much the same as in 2001, but that the underlying inflation trend is much weaker compared with the same period of last year. Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2002