PPI rises to 5.5% in April

"This rate is 1.8 percentage points higher than the corresponding annual rate of 3.7% in March 2010," said Stats SA. PPI is the price of goods leaving factories and mines.

According to Stats SA the rise could be explained by changes in the agriculture, mining and quarrying indexes. Products of petroleum and coal; chemicals and chemical products; rubber and plastic products; basic metals; electricity and other manufactures also contributed.

Commenting on the data, Nedbank economist Carmen Altenkirch said the data was above marked expectation which had been 5%.

"Producer inflation will rise further in the next few months but it has no immediate implications for inflation as it is being driven by higher commodity prices rather than by the increased cost of inputs at the manufacturing level," she said.

Containing construction prices

She said price increases of building materials and capital goods are likely to be contained by the slowdown of the construction industry after the World Cup. This is because infrastructure spending by the public sector is likely to moderate while spare capacity continues to dampen the need for new capital expenditure in the private sector.

"Today's PPI figure does not alter our view that rates will remain unchanged until the third quarter of 2011. However, a negative growth surprise combined with a favarouble inflation outlook could still prompt the Reserve Bank to loosen monetary policy further," she said.

Earlier this month the Monetary Policy Committee decided to keep rates unchanged at 6.5%.