South Korea's producer prices fell for the 10th straight month in July as the local currency's gain to the U.S. dollar helped offset higher oil costs, the central bank said Friday.
The producer price index, a barometer of future consumer inflation, slid 0.9 percent in July from a year earlier, compared with a 1.4 percent on-year decline in June, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK).
On a yearly basis, the producer prices have fallen every month since October 2012 when such prices fell 0.5 percent on-year. In April, the index fell 2.8 percent from a year earlier, the fastest on-year decline in 42 months.
Prices of Dubai crude, South Korea's benchmark, rose 4.5 percent in July from a year earlier, compared with a 6.1 percent on-year gain in June. The local currency gained 1.43 percent to the greenback in July compared with a year ago.
Compared with a month earlier, the producer prices stayed flat in July, unchanged from June.
The data came as the BOK froze the key interest rate at 2.5 percent for the third straight month in August, as Asia's fourth-largest economy is recovering.
Korea's consumer prices remained in the 1-percent range for the ninth straight month in July. The on-year growth of consumer prices in July was still running below the BOK's inflation target band of 2.5-3.5 percent for 2013-2015. (Yonhap News)
