Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (April 28): Malaysia’s Producer Price Index (PPI) for local production in March 2021 rose 6.7% — four percentage points higher than 2.7% recorded last month.

In a statement today, the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) said that based on PPI record, this is the highest increase since August 2017.

Chief Statistician Malaysia Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin said the growth was driven by the increase in the mining index, which rebounded to 32% as compared to negative 11% in the previous month.

He said the agriculture, forestry and fishing index marked a new high growth of 41.1% as commodities recorded higher prices this month.

“Subsequently, manufacturing index also registered an increase of 2.2% resulting from a higher price of petroleum and agriculture commodities.

“Meanwhile, the electricity and gas supply, and water supply indices recorded a decline of 1.4% and 0.1% respectively,” he said.

Mohd Uzir said that on a monthly basis, the PPI for local production recorded an increase of 0.7% in March 2021, down from 1.5% in February 2021.

He said four indices continued their momentum of growth: agriculture, forestry and fishing (2.3%), mining (1%), electricity and gas supply (0.8%) and manufacturing (0.6%). Meanwhile, the water supply index fell 0.2%.

“The PPI local production for the first quarter of 2021 rose 3% to 108.5 from 105.3 in the same quarter of the previous year.

“The growth was due to the higher indices of agriculture, forestry and fishing (32.6%), manufacturing (1.6%) and water supply (0.4%).

“Meanwhile, the mining, and electricity and gas supply indices both recorded a decline of 7.3% and 1.7% respectively. For quarterly comparison, the PPI local production increased by 5.1% from 2% in the fourth quarter of 2020,” he said.

DOSM also reported that for stages of processing, the index of crude materials for further processing surged to 31.8% from 10% in February 2021.

It said the index of intermediate materials, supplies and components also increased 2.8%.

However, the finished goods index recorded negative 0.2%.

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