Spain's industrial prices rise 7.8% year-on-year in February

(Reuters) - Spanish industrial prices rose 7.8% in February from the same month a year earlier, the same pace as a revised 7.8% in January and the slowest in almost two years, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said on Friday.

Electricity, transport and distribution led the increase while prices of gas and refined oil products fell, INE said.

INE revised the year-on-year January price increase down to 7.8% from an initial 8.2%, taking the rate to its lowest since March 2021 when it was 6.4%.

Following turmoil on energy markets in 2021 and 2022, industrial prices in Spain peaked at 47% in March last year. Companies tend to pass on industrial price rises to customers, ultimately fuelling inflation.

Annual inflation in the period through February was 6.0%, down from a peak of 10.8% last summer, INE said last week, though core inflation, which strips out volatile fresh food and energy prices, was at 7.6%.

(Reporting by Jakub Olesiuk and Natalia Siniawski, editing by Inti Landauro and Christina Fincher)