•    Producer Price Index decelerates in March 2015

Producer Price Index (PPI, 2000=100) for manufacturing decreased by 5.4 percent in March 2015 compared to 0.1 percent posted in March 2014. The slowdown was primarily due to the decrements posted by twelve sectors with significant decreases reflected by five sectors led by   chemical products (-21.0%). Furthermore, the reductions in the heavily weighted petroleum products (-18.3%) and electrical machinery (-10.8%) also contributed to the overall negative performance of the March 2015 PPI.  On the other hand, seven of the twenty major sectors registered single-digit increases led by tobacco products (7.1%). Refer to Tables 1 and A-1.

On a monthly basis, PPI accelerated by 0.2 percent in March 2015 after falling by 0.1 percent a month earlier. Ten sectors led by petroleum products (8.8%) pulled-up the monthly PPI. Furthermore, five sectors posted decreases while four sectors remain unchanged. Refer to Tables 1 and A-2.

• Introduction

• Method of Index Computation

• Industry Coverage

Starting with January 2013 reference month, the PPI utilizes the 2009 Philippine Standard Industry Classification (PSIC) to classify sectors and industries. Selected industry classes of the 2009 PSIC were grouped to form the 20 industry groupings of the 2014 PPS. These are presented in the table below.

Note:  * - Major sectors categorized into sub-sectors

• Response Rate

The response rate for March 2015 is 82.1 percent, which corresponds to the retrieval of 536 establishments’ reports out of the 653 samples for the survey.  Refer to Table B.

Missing prices for products of sample establishments are estimated using the short-term relative change of all available prices within the same industry class. Revisions to the preliminary estimates are done upon receipt of actual reports from late respondents.