Frankfurt: Germany’s import prices continued theirdeclining trend at the end of the final quarter amid lower energycosts, data released by Destatis on Wednesday showed.

Import prices were down 8.5 per cent year-over-year in December, slightlyslower than the 9.0 per cent slump seen a month ago. Prices have been fallingsince March 2023.

Destatis said the decline was primarily due to a base effectoriginating from the high price increases in 2022.

Data showed that energy import prices plunged 32.1 per cent annually and theprices of imported intermediate goods decreased 7.2 per cent . Meanwhile,capital goods prices rose 1.8 per cent .

On a monthly basis, import prices dropped 1.1 per cent , following a 0.1 per cent fallin November.

During the whole year 2023, overall import prices were 8.3 per cent lowercompared to 2022. Moreover, this was the steepest fall since 2009.

Further, data showed that export prices declined 2.4 per cent from theprevious year after falling 2.2 per cent in the prior month.Export prices posted a stable monthly fall of 0.2 per cent .__dpa