It was only last week we looked at some signs of future inflationary pressure from China as its producer price number rose to 4.4%. This morning we discovered what impact these pressures have had on the UK.
The annual rate of inflation for materials and fuels purchased by manufacturers (input prices) was 5.9% in March 2021, up from 3.3% in February 2021 . This is the fourth consecutive month the rate has been positive, following 10 consecutive months of negative annual inflation between February 2020 and November 2020.
The pattern is part of the story of the pandemic as we saw declines in demand driving lower prices and now the beginnings of recovery seeing higher ones. One point of note is that yesterday was the anniversary of the plunge in oil prices with futures on the West Texas Intermediate or WTI benchmark going as low as minus 40 US Dollars. I shall return to that issue in a bit but the UK numbers have not reached April yet. We can see what has driven the move below.