PPI rises to 3.5% in February

Pretoria - The Producer Price Inflation (PPI) rose to 3.5 percent in February, reported Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) on Thursday.

"This rate is 0.8 of a percentage point higher than the corresponding annual rate of 2.7 percent in January 2010," said Stats SA.

Market expectation for PPI, which is the price of goods leaving factories and mines, was that it would come in at 3.7 percent year-on-year due to higher commodity prices.

According to Stats SA, the higher rate could be explained by increases in the annual rate of change in indices for agriculture, forestry and basic metals among other things.

These were counteracted partly by decreases in mining and quarrying as well as transport.