MNI BRIEF: No Red Sea Effect In UK Data - ONS

A modest slowdown in UK port traffic in January was seasonal, with no sign of Red Sea disruption in inflation or trade data or high-frequency weekly shipping indicators, Office for National Statistics Chief Economist Grant Fitzner told MNI.

“As yet we are not seeing anything – and it tends to take a long while to feed through from trade to import prices – PPI – and then into CPI,” Grant Fitzner said. “It would take some time. We are certainly keeping an eye on it, but there’s no early signs of anything coming through,” he noted.

A continuing fall in prices for manufactured indicates no price pressure yet, he added.

“Goods price inflation is lower than services inflation and actually fell again in January. We’d obviously expect any impact to show up first in goods price inflation,” Fitzner said.