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The Office for National Statistics said the figure represents the fastest increase since records began in 1986.

Output price annual inflation for all manufactured products remained at 5.7 per cent, the highest rate since 1991.

Month on month, the output prices measure for all manufactured products rose 0.3 per cent in February, mainly reflecting rises in other manufactured products.

Producer Price (PPI) Indices monitor the price changes of goods bought and sold by UK manufacturers.

Input prices are prices of materials and fuels bought and output prices, also known as 'factory gate prices', are prices at which goods are sold.

The 'narrow' output prices measure, which leaves out volatile sectors, showed an annual increase of 3.0 per cent. The seasonally adjusted measure rose 0.2 per cent between January and February.

Month on month, the input prices measure of UK manufacturers' materials and fuels rose 1.3 per cent. This mainly reflected a rise in the price of crude oil. In seasonally adjusted terms the index rose 1.7 per cent between January and February.

The 'narrow' input prices measure rose 8.2 per cent in the year to February. In seasonally adjusted terms the index rose 0.9 per cent between January and February.

Manufacturing 

Manufacturing output remained unchanged in the three months to January 2008 compared with the three months to October 2007. Output decreased in 10 out of the 13 sub-sectors and increased in three sub-sectors.

Despite the widespread decreases across manufacturing in the latest three months, the only significant movement was an increase of 2.2 per cent in the transport equipment industries.

This increase was due to stronger output from both the shipbuilding and aircraft manufacture industries.

Overall production output remained unchanged on a three-monthly basis. There was a decrease in output of 1.9 per cent in the mining and quarrying sector and an increase of 1.9 per cent in the energy supply sector.

Within energy supply, electricity supply output increased by 3.4 per cent in the latest three months due to a switch from gas to coal as the input fuel for electricity generation.

Coal is currently a more cost-efficient fuel than gas and higher use of coal has led to an increase in the value-added index for the electricity supply industry.

Within the mining and quarrying sector an increase in gas extraction output has been offset by decreases in both oil extraction and coal extraction output.

Between December and January, manufacturing output increased by 0.4 per cent. 8 of the 13 sub-sectors increased output and five sub-sectors decreased output in the latest month.

There were significant increases in the machinery and equipment industries, where output rose by 2.0 per cent, and in the chemicals and man-made fibres industries, where output rose by 1.4 per cent.

There was also a significant decrease in the transport equipment industries, where output fell by 1.3 per cent in the latest month.

Total production output decreased by 0.1 per cent between December and January.

Mining and quarrying output decreased by 4.1 per cent and energy supply output decreased by 0.2 per cent. Within the mining and quarrying sector there were decreases in both oil and gas extraction output.

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Related links

• Office for National Statistics
• Producer Prices - March 2008