(Yicai Global) April 9 -- China’s industrial producer price index, a measure of industrial profitability, added 4.4 percent last month from the same period last year, the biggest gain since July 2018, largely due to surging international commodity prices, according to the latest data.

The 4.4 percent March increase was a big jump from February’s 1.7 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics said today. A poll of top economists by Yicai Global had forecast growth of 3.17 percent.

Price increases in raw materials accounted for around 3.4 percentage points of the March PPI and the carryover effect from last year another 1 percentage point, said Dong Lijuan, senior statistician at the NBS’s Department of Urban Surveys.

The March PPI advanced 1.6 percent from February, 0.8 percentage points more than the February monthly gain.

Producer prices, or the prices factories get paid for their output, gained substantially in a number of the 40 industries surveyed. Prices in the ferrous metal smelting and rolling processing industries jumped 21.5 percent, those in the nonferrous metal smelting and rolling processing industry 21.3 percent and in the chemical raw materials and chemical products industry 11.4 percent.

The oil and natural gas exploitation industry saw prices leap 23.7 percent. Prices in the oil, coal and other fuel processing industry were up 13.9 percent, those in the electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing industry gained 1 percent and in the coal mining and washing industry 6.9 percent.

Editor: Kim Taylor