Industrial producer prices in Shanxi Province increased by 0.9% month-on-month in March, marking the first rise this year. According to data released by the Shanxi Survey Team of the National Bureau of Statistics, the province's Producer Price Index (PPI) fell by 2.4% year-on-year in March, with the rate of decline narrowing by 3.4 percentage points compared to the previous month. On a monthly basis, the PPI shifted from a 0.2% decline in February to a 0.9% increase in March, representing the first monthly growth since the beginning of the year.
The month-on-month increase in PPI was primarily driven by constrained international crude oil and natural gas supplies, which led to sustained price hikes in these energy sources. As a result, production costs for chemical products rose, prompting downstream industries to shift toward coal as a substitute for oil and gas to manage expenses. Among the key sectors, the ex-factory prices for the chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing industry rose by 5.2% month-on-month, accelerating by 4.2 percentage points. The ex-factory prices for the production and supply of electricity and heat reversed from a 2.1% decline in the previous month to a 4.6% increase. Prices in the coal mining and washing industry turned from a 0.6% decline in February to a 0.6% increase in March. Meanwhile, ex-factory prices for the smelting and pressing of ferrous metals increased by 0.3% month-on-month, though the growth rate slowed by 0.2 percentage points. In contrast, prices in the petroleum, coal, and other fuel processing industry shifted from a 0.6% increase in February to a 0.6% decrease in March. Collectively, these five major industries contributed approximately 0.87 percentage points to the overall month-on-month increase in the PPI.
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