The inflation rate of goods leaving the factory gate has fallen for the first time in six months, providing some long-overdue good news for the Bank of England as it prepares its key inflation forecasts.

Output prices rose by 0.5 per cent in April, less than the previous month and taking the annual rate down to 2.5 per cent from 2.7 per cent in March, official data showed yesterday.

The data encouraged hopes that today’s consumer price index, the Bank’s target measure of inflation, could fall back from the 3.1 per cent level that it reached in March – the highest level since the Bank took control of interest rates in 1997.

The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee, which will set out its detailed forecasts and thinking in tomorrow’s quarterly Inflation Report, will be encouraged by the news that core output price inflation fell back to 2.4 per cent in April, from a figure of 2.7 per cent the month before. although analysts said that the figure was still high.

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The weaker reading was caused by a reversal of a sudden rise in scrap metal costs and a sharp drop in the cost of motor vehicles, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Paul Dales, of Capital Economics, said: “April’s producer prices data provided some tentative evidence that manufacturers are finding it harder to make price rises stick, but it is far too soon to conclude that pipeline price pressures have peaked.”

Manufacturers’ input prices fell by 0.3 per cent year on year, the data showed. This was despite a 5.6 per cent rise in the price of crude oil products in April.

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