•    Producer Price Index decelerates in May 2015

Producer Price Index (PPI, 2000=100) for manufacturing fell by 4.4 percent in May 2015 compared with negative 1.1 percent in May 2014. This is the eight straight month since October 2014 that the PPI reflected a negative annual rate. In May, the decrease can be traced to the double-digit decrements of three sectors namely: furniture and fixtures (-26.1%), petroleum products (-18.0%) and wood and wood products (-16.3%). On the other hand, nine of the twenty major sectors registered single-digit increases led by beverages (8.9%). Refer to Tables 1 and A-1.

On a monthly basis, PPI moved up 0.3 percent in May 2015 following a 0.6 percent decline in April 2015. The two heavily weighted sectors: petroleum products (3.2%) and electrical machinery (2.3%) pulled up the monthly PPI. Furthermore, three sectors posted flat growths while eight sectors reflected decreases. 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 May 2015 is 81.6 percent, which corresponds to the retrieval of 594 establishments’ reports out of the 728 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 responding establishments.