Businesses get some reprieve in March quarter on cheaper prices

Thu, 16 May 2019

By Paul McBeth May 17 (BusinessDesk) - Businesses got a reprieve in the March quarter as cheaper wholesale electricity helped push down the prices producers paid in the period. Prices paid by producers, known as input prices, fell 0.9 percent in the March quarter, its first contraction since March 2016, according to Stats NZ's producers price index. The quarterly decline was primarily from a 12 percent drop in the price of electricity generation, which spiked last year when a shortage of gas coincided with low hydro-lake storage. Mar...

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