British wholesale prices up 0.3 percent in September

LONDON (AFP) - British wholesale prices, or the cost of goods at the factory gate, rose by 0.3 percent in September from August, driven up by record high crude oil prices.
Prices showed a gain of 3.1 percent in September compared with the figure a year earlier, the highest year-on-year increase since April 1996, the National Statistics office said Monday.
The rises, coming as oil prices climbed by 2.2 percent between August and September, were above analysts' forecasts, which bet on a month-on-month increase of 0.1 percent and annual rise of 2.7 percent.
Input prices, or the cost of raw materials to industry, rose by a 1.3 percent in September from August.
Year-on-year, input prices rose 7.4 percent.
On Monday, the price of reference light sweet crude for November delivery traded at 53.06 dollars a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange .
It had touched a peak of 53.40 dollars last Friday, a record in the contract's 21-year history, largely as a result of fears of interrupted supplies from Nigeria.