IDEX Polished Price Index Dips in January
February 03, 25
(IDEX Online) - The IDEX Polished Price Index dipped again during January, down by 1.32 per cent. It follows a 1.6 per cent decline in December 2024 and suggests that the long-awaited recovery, which appeared to have been heralded by a modest 0.62 per cent in November, has not yet come to pass. The first few days of 2025 saw some small gains, but slight fluctuations throughout the month resulted in a near straight line, in a downwards direction.
As we zoom out we can see how prices levelled in the final months after almost a year of decline, but have now started falling again. The Index closed the month at 95.40, which means prices are now lower than when it was launched (benchmarked at 100) in July 2004. The Index hit its lowest point for 13 years in May 2024 and the trend has remained downwards since then.
Month-to-month prices fell by 1.1 per cent in January, after two months when they were static or near-static. During 2024 month-to-month prices rose only twice - by 0.4 per cent in January and by just 0.1 per cent in December. They hit their low point in July, with a fall of 3.1 per cent.
Year-to-year prices were 13.4 per cent lower in January, that's the biggest monthly drop since July 2024. The year-on-year gaps had been narrowing in the four months from August 2024 but widened in December and again in January 2025.
Month-to-month prices for goods of all sizes shown below dropped, except for 2.0-cts, which were unchanged. In December, by contrast, there were slight increases for some goods, although there were also bigger drops for 4.0-cts and 5.0-cts.
Year-to-year prices for virtually all sizes shown below suffered slightly bigger losses in January than they did in December. It was only 3.0-cts that suffered a marginally smaller drop in January than in December. The biggest drop was 18.7 per cent among 1.0-cts.
Goods of all sizes shown below remain in overall decline. 2.0-cts were static in January, but all other sizes were down.
