Producer facing higher costs, lower sales

TIRANA, June 12 – Apart from falling sales due to a drop in purchasing power and consumers’ saving trend, Albanian producers are also facing higher production costs. Latest INSTAT data show producer prices continued their rising trend even in the first quarter of 2012, rising by 2.5 percent year-on-year and 1.5 percent compared to the final quarter of 2011. INSTAT data show the Producer Price Index (PPI), measuring price changes from the makers of a product, rose by 3.8 percent y-o-y for the processing industry and 0.7 percent for the extractive industry. PPI in the extraction of crude oil, rose by 4 percent y-o-y. Meanwhile, the PPI for domestic products registered a 1.5 percent increase compared to the final quarter of 2011 with producer prices in the processing and extractive industries rising by 2 percent and 1.8 percent respectively. The export price index also rose by 1.4 percent compared to the previous quarter with prices in the processing industry which accounts for the majority of Albanian exports up by 1.4 percent.