PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s producer price index (PPI), which measures the prices of goods at the factory gate, recorded a decrease to negative 1.3% in December 2023 as compared to negative 1.5% in November 2023, said the statistics department.
Chief Statistician Uzir Mahidin said the downtrend was attributed to the mining sector, which fell to negative 3.4% (November 2023: -4.7%) due to the decline of both extraction of natural gas (-7.8%) and extraction of crude petroleum (-1.9%) indices.
He said the manufacturing sector continued to shrink to negative 1.5% as against a negative 1.4% a month before owing to the manufacture of coke and refined petroleum products (-12.3%) and manufacture of food products (-4.2%) indices.
The electricity and gas supply sector also went down to negative 0.6%, similar to the previous month, he added.
“Conversely, the agriculture, forestry, and fishing sector increased by 1.3% after a decrease of negative 0.4% in November 2023 due to the incline in animal production (6.3%) and fishing (3.8%) indices.
“At the same time, the water supply index also went up 0.4%,” he said in a statement.
For a month-on-month comparison, Uzir said PPI local production decreased to negative 0.2% in December 2023 compared to a negative 0.7% in the previous month.
“With the exception of the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector, which remained unchanged, all other sectors recorded a decline,” he added.
As for the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2023, Uzir noted that PPI local production recorded a decrease to negative 1% (Q3 2023: -1.4%) due to the mining (-2.5%), manufacturing (-1.2%) as well as electricity and gas supply (-0.5%) sectors.
Meanwhile, he concluded that in 2023, the PPI local production went down to negative 1.9% after a growth of 7.8% in 2022.
