South Korea March Producer Prices Rise 1.6%, Most in Four Years, as Mideast War Lifts Oil

South Korea’s producer prices posted their biggest monthly increase in about four years in March as the war in the Middle East drove a sharp rise in global oil prices.

The producer price index stood at 125.24 in March, with 2020 as the base year of 100, up 1.6% from 123.28 in February, according to Bank of Korea data released on April 22.

That matched the steepest monthly gain since April 2022, when prices also rose 1.6% in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Among manufactured goods, coal and petroleum products jumped 31.9%, the biggest increase since December 1997, when they rose 57.7% during the Asian financial crisis. Chemical products gained 6.7%.

Among individual items, naphtha surged 68.0%, diesel climbed 20.8%, ethylene rose 60.5% and xylene advanced 33.5%. Computer memory devices soared 101.4%, while DRAM increased 18.9%.

The domestic supply price index, which tracks price changes including imported goods, rose 2.3% from the previous month. Raw materials gained 5.1%, intermediate goods rose 2.8% and final goods increased 0.6%.

The total output price index for March, which includes exports in addition to domestic shipments, climbed 4.7%. Lee Moon-hee, head of the BOK’s price statistics team, said the March increase in producer prices is expected to add upward pressure to consumer inflation.

Shim Sung-mi, Hankyung.com reporter, smshim@hankyung.com