Malaysian Services Producer Prices Rise 3.6% as Air Transport Costs Climb
Transportation prices climbed 6.3% year on year, while arts, entertainment and recreation recorded the sharpest increase among the services categories tracked.
Prices received by Malaysian services producers rose 3.6% in the third quarter from a year earlier, with transportation, hospitality and recreation among the categories recording the largest annual gains. The increase followed a 2.9% rise in the previous quarter.
The Department of Statistics Malaysia's Nov. 6 release put the overall Services Producer Price Index at 121.2, up from 117.0 a year earlier and 120.3 in the second quarter. The index uses 2010 as its base year. Compared with the preceding quarter, the index rose 0.7%, down from the second quarter's 1.1% increase. The annual and quarterly figures compare different periods and show that a stronger year-on-year reading can coexist with a slower rise over the latest three months.
Transportation producer prices increased 6.3% from a year earlier, compared with 5.6% in the second quarter. The department identified passenger air transport, where prices rose 23.4% year on year, as the main contributor to the sector's increase. From the second to the third quarter, the passenger air transport index rose 7.7% and the overall transportation index rose 1.4%. The overall transportation index had risen 2.0% from the first to the second quarter, so transportation recorded a slower quarterly gain even as its annual rate increased.
For anyone comparing a fare for a particular route, the national index is a broad measure. It records changes in the prices received by providers in the set of services the department tracks. It does not give the fare for a particular flight, distinguish between individual booking dates or show how much of any increase a particular buyer experienced.
Large Differences Across Services
Arts, entertainment and recreation recorded the steepest annual rise among the eight groups in the release, at 8.2%. That followed a 1.6% gain in the second quarter. It also recorded the largest quarter-on-quarter rise in the third quarter, at 3.2%. Accommodation and food and beverage services rose 6.5% from a year earlier and 0.8% from the previous quarter. The department reported a 5.9% annual increase for restaurants and mobile food service activities.
In several other categories, annual price increases were smaller. Education rose 2.2%, health 1.7%, real estate activities 1.3% and professional services 1.0%. Information and communication rose 0.4% on the year. Its index was unchanged from the second quarter at the precision published in the table. Data processing and hosting and computer programming and related services each recorded a 0.8% annual increase within that broader group.
The figures offer a way to compare changes across the different kinds of services that households and businesses buy. A hospitality operator and a company procuring communications services may face very different changes in the prices they pay. The index also cannot establish whether a provider's profit margin improved. A change in selling prices tells only one side of that calculation, which also depends on the cost of providing the service.
Two other sectors also showed the difference between annual and quarterly movements. Accommodation and food services posted a 6.5% annual rise, but their 0.8% quarterly increase was smaller than the preceding quarter's 1.3%. Real estate activities rose 1.3% on the year and 0.1% on the quarter.
The data cover July through September. Prices offered during the Deepavali travel period in November fall outside that reporting window, so the release supplies a benchmark for earlier price movements rather than a reading on holiday fares. The difference matters when using the transportation figure to explain what travelers are seeing now.