Rising petrol prices put squeeze on business margins

Fri, 18 Feb 2022

The steep increase in petrol prices helped squeeze firms’ profitability in the final three months of 2021, as costs facing businesses rose at a faster pace than their own price hikes.Prices paid by producers – known as input prices – rose 8.1% in the three months ended Dec 31 from the same period a year earlier, while output prices – the prices they receive – rose 7.2%, according to Stats NZ’s producer price index.The sharpest increase was in output prices for petroleum and coal product manufacturing –...

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