Oman reported a year-on-year producer deflation of 4.9% in the fourth quarter of 2016, even as logging a quarterly inflation of 5.5% compared with the previous quarter.

According to data released by the NCSI), oil and gas products led the price fall in the fourth quarter with a 5.3% drop in producer prices (compared with the same quarter of 2015). This was followed by a 3.9% decline in the mining, electricity and water set, and a further 3.1% decrease in prices in the non-oil manufacturing segment. The crude oil and natural gas subset registered a price fall of 8.4%, while prices of refined oil products went up by 19.6% in the fourth quarter. In the mining, electricity and water set, prices of mineral, stones and sands increased 4.1%, but electricity and water prices declined 4.7%.

Under the non-oil manufacturing category, the food, beverages and textiles set witnessed a marginal price fall of 0.1%. However, prices of fish, fruits, vegetables and oils logged a price rise of 4.4%, while dairy products turned costlier by 0.8%, in contrast with a 4.0% fall in bakery and other products. Non-alcoholic beverages saw prices rise by 0.1%. Clothing, textiles and footwear products recorded a producer price decline of 1.3% in the last quarter of 2016.

On the other hand, transportable goods prices shot up by 0.5%; notably the prices of gases, acids and polypropylene went up by 4.7%. However, the quarter witnessed a cooling effect in the Paints & Pharmaceutical Products and the Rubber & Plastics Products sets, with prices down by 4.6% and 6.7% respectively. Glass, Cement & Marble Products declined by 0.3%, accompanied by a 0.6% drop in prices of jewellery and furniture.  Meanwhile, the metal products, machinery and equipment set posted a significant 11.8% fall in prices in Q4, 2016 as against Q4, 2015.

ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ​