By Ed Frankl

The U.K.'s Office for National Statistics said Friday it paused publication of its index of producer prices, a new disappointment for the data agency that has faced criticism from the Bank of England over issues with data collection.

"During work to improve the systems used to create the producer price index and the services producer price indices, our quality assurance identified a problem with the chain-linking methods used to calculate these indices," the ONS said.

The problem affects the years from 2008 onward, though the main impact on annual PPI rates was seen in 2022 and 2023, just as the global ramp-up in inflation was gathering steam. Headline output PPI is set to be revised upward, while the headline SPPI is likely to be revised downward, the ONS noted.

The news adds to continuing concerns facing the ONS, which has had longstanding data-collection issues over low sample sizes at its monthly labour-force survey.

The Bank of England on Thursday said quality issues with the official labour market data continued to be an area of concern for policymakers, increasing the challenge of gauging the underlying state of labour-market activity.

Revisions to producer-price data might lead to impacts on the level of some industries when gauging the level of U.K. gross domestic product, the agency said. The U.K.'s GDP for the second and third quarters of 2024 were both already revised down after their first publication, while the first quarter has been revised upward.

Write to Ed Frankl at edward.frankl@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 21, 2025 03:48 ET (07:48 GMT)

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