Price index of first-hand domestic sales, 15 January 2008

The price index of first-hand domestic sales fell by 0.3 per cent from December 2007 to January 2008. This was mainly due to lower prices of fuels, lubricants and related materials, as well lower prices of machinery and transport equipment. The price of electricity fell by 0.9 per cent, mainly due to mild weather and high reservoir levels in January.

The fall in prices of machinery and transport equipment was 0.4 per cent from last month. Office machines and data processing machines (down 1.6 per cent) were the main contributors to this decline.

Prices of food products rose by 0.2 per cent from December. Vegetables and fruit showed the largest increase within this category (up 3.8 per cent). Prices of coffee, tea, cocoa and spices, on the other hand, fell by 4.8 per cent. These two opposite developments explain why the prices of food products changed very little from last month.

Price growth of 7.9 per cent from January 2007 to January 2008

The price index of first-hand domestic sales increased 7.9 per cent from January 2007 to January 2008. The increase was due to higher prices in all groups except for crude materials, inedible (down 4.1 per cent) and a fall in prices of machinery and transport equipment of 1.2 per cent. The commodities with the largest changes are electricity (up 59.7 per cent) and petroleum and petroleum products (up 35.7 per cent).

New weights

When entering a new year, the weights used for calculating the price index have been updated. The weights express the influence of different industries on the total price index, and are based on the shares of different industries in the total production value in the Norwegian economy in the previous year. The largest changes from 2007 to 2008 were the huge fall in the weights for fuels, lubricants and related materials and for electricity, while the weights for machinery and transport equipment rose. The weights for the other industries remained relatively stable from 2007 to 2008.