MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Producer price inflation in Brazil anticipates Central bank will raise interest rates

Factory gate prices rose 3.36% in Jan from the month before, almost the 3.4% increase registered last October, the highest since the IBGE series began in 2014.

Brazil's statistics agency IBGE said on Tuesday the monthly rate of producer price inflation kicked off this year at its second highest, with prices rising across all 24 activities surveyed.

Factory gate prices rose 3.36% in January from the month before, almost touching the 3.4% increase registered last October, the highest since the IBGE series began in 2014.

The annual rate of producer price inflation in January was 23%, IBGE said.

The jump in wholesale prices at the factory gate in January was led by a 10.7% surge in mining industry inflation, which accounted for 0.59 percentage points of the overall rise.

Annual inflation in this segment was 52.9%, the highest of all 24 activities surveyed.

Gasoline and related prices rose 5.3% in the month, accounting for 0.45 percentage points of the overall rise and the second biggest single contributor, IBGE said.

The third most important driver was a 6.1% rise in metals industry inflation, accounting for 0.4 percentage points of the total rise. These prices rose almost 40% over the previous year.

A growing number of economists now think the central bank will raise as early as interest rates next month because consumer price inflation expectations are starting to drift above the bank’s central year-end target of 3.75%.

With information from Reuters