Norway's export-driven manufacturing sector has experienced a sharp slowdown in price growth, according to new figures released by Statistics Norway. The latest Producer Price Index (PPI) data reveals that prices for Norwegian industrial goods sold abroad rose by just 0.5 per cent in May compared to the same period last year, a significant decline from April's 3.6 per cent annual increase.
'Since autumn last year, price growth for exported goods has been significantly higher than for goods sold on the domestic market. However, by April the gap has almost disappeared and in May, the growth was higher in the domestic market than in the export market,' said Espen Kristiansen, Head of Section at Statistics Norway.
The PPI tracks price developments across Norwegian manufacturing, oil and gas extraction, electricity supply, and mining. This month's analysis places particular focus on the manufacturing sector, where total prices rose 1.6 per cent year-on-year in May, down from 3.2 per cent in April. The slowdown was more pronounced in exports than in the domestic market, reversing a trend that had persisted since June 2024.
Key export industries such as basic metals and refined petroleum products were central to this shift. In the basic metal sector, prices on exported goods had risen by just over 9 per cent in April but fell by 0.6 per cent in May. The petroleum processing industry similarly recorded a significant drop in its twelve-month growth rate.
'Large fluctuations in the twelve-month rate in export prices are not uncommon in these industries,' Kristiansen noted, citing ongoing volatility in global commodity markets.
Further contributing to this trend was a reduction in price growth across multiple export-focused manufacturing industries over the past three months, including food processing, metal production, and refined petroleum products.
Meanwhile, food imports are witnessing renewed inflation. The Price Index of First-Hand Domestic Sales (PIF), which includes imported goods, showed that food prices—after a brief decline. have again surged. 'At the end of 2024 and so far this year, the price increase for imported food products has increased again, and from February to April was around 11 per cent, compared with the same periods last year,' said Kristiansen. From May 2024 to May 2025, imported food prices rose 9.5 per cent.
Other notable developments in May's PPI include a 7.5 per cent drop in the price index for crude oil and natural gas extraction, which pulled the overall PPI into negative territory, down from a 2.1 per cent annual increase in April to minus 0.1 per cent in May.
Electricity prices, in contrast, surged. The power supply sector saw a 40.2 per cent year-on-year increase, up from 19.4 per cent in April, despite a monthly decline of 4.9 per cent.
These shifts underline the complex and often divergent pressures shaping Norway's industrial pricing landscape, both domestically and internationally.
More information:
Statistics Norway
www.ssb.no