Japanese services producer prices accelerated to 3.6 percent, and the version of the index that leaves out international shipping did not move

The Bank of Japan publishes this index twice, and this month the second version is the one to read.

Headline services producer prices rose 3.6 percent in July from a year earlier, the Bank said in preliminary figures released at 8.50am on Wednesday in Tokyo, up from a revised 3.4 percent in June. The index that excludes international transportation rose 3.1 percent. That is exactly what it rose in June.

The excluded group weighs 7.5 points out of 1,000.

One row of the table

International transportation prices rose 58.0 percent over the year in July, against a revised 45.8 percent in June, and 9.1 percent in the month alone. Inside it, ocean freight transportation rose 67.4 percent against a revised 52.2 percent, with the index at 259.5 on a 2020 base of 100, up from 232.9. The Bank names the item doing the work on that row: ocean tankers.

The report also prints what each group contributed to the change in the annual rate between June and July. All items moved 0.2 points. Transportation and postal activities accounts for 0.15 of that, and ocean freight transportation for 0.12 on its own.

Not everything in the group rose. International air freight transportation decelerated to 37.7 percent from 48.0 percent and fell 6.8 percent in the month, taking 0.01 points off the headline change.

The Bank gives no reason for any of it. This is a price index, and the report explains what moved rather than why.

Elsewhere it is quiet, or falling

Away from the ports, the report reads as a mild cooling. Software development slowed to 3.0 percent from a revised 3.4. Information and communications as a whole slowed to 2.8 percent from a revised 3.0. Advertising services are not merely slowing but falling, at minus 1.6 percent against a revised minus 1.1, with television and radio advertising at minus 6.4 percent.

Two lines went the other way. Finance and insurance rose to 1.3 percent from a revised 0.9. Hotels rose to 6.3 percent from 2.4, an index move of 6.7 percent in the month, though June had fallen 17.4 percent, so the July figure is a rebound within a series that swings hard.

Leasing and rental remains the fastest of the major groups outside transport, at 11.6 percent, with leasing alone at 17.2 percent.

The Bank's own split

The report carries a special aggregate that divides services by how much labour cost they carry, and it is the useful cut this month.

Services with a high labour cost ratio, weighing 538.0 of the 1,000, rose 3.0 percent, unchanged from a revised 3.0. Services with a low labour cost ratio, weighing 462.0, rose 4.4 percent, up from a revised 4.0. Wage-driven services inflation, on the Bank's own definition of it, did not accelerate at all in July.

What is preliminary

The figures are preliminary and the report says so in its title. April, May and June all carry revision marks in this edition, on both the headline series and the series excluding international transportation.

At 3.6 percent the headline is back where it stood in April and May, before June printed 3.4.

The next report is due on Monday 28 September.