Japan's producer prices increase by the smallest amount in 19 months.

Japan's producer prices increased by 2.4% year-on-year in December 2025, down from a 2.7% rise in the previous month, aligning with market projections. This represented the smallest annual growth since May 2024. Prices moderated for various sectors including transport equipment (1.4% compared to 1.5% in November), beverages and food (5.0% compared to 5.1%), general-purpose machinery (2.8% compared to 3.0%), other manufacturing (2.3% compared to 2.4%), production machinery (3.5% compared to 4.0%), and plastics (0.4% compared to 0.5%). Conversely, prices continued to decline for chemicals (-3.2% compared to -3.5%), iron and steel (-6.7% compared to -6.9%), and petroleum and coal products (-8.6% compared to -2.5%). In contrast, inflation accelerated for non-ferrous metals (22.1% compared to 14.9%), electrical machinery (2.5% compared to 2.4%), metal products (0.3% compared to 0.1%), information and communications (1.8% compared to 1.6%), and business-oriented machinery (2.4% compared to 0.9%). On a monthly basis, producer price inflation decelerated to 0.1% from 0.3% in November, meeting expectations and marking the slowest pace in four months.