Wholesale prices in November dropped 4.9 percent from a year earlier for the 11th consecutive month of decline, due to falling energy and commodity prices and sluggish domestic demand, the Bank of Japan said Thursday.
The prices, gauged by the central bank's corporate goods price index, stood at 102.2 against the 2005 base of 100, the BOJ said in a preliminary report. The pace of price decline was less than the average market forecast of a 5.1 percent fall, as well as the previous month's revised 6.8 percent drop.
Contributing the most to the fall were steel prices, which plunged 20.2 percent amid sluggish demand. Oil and coal products fell 13.5 percent in reaction to the previous year's price spike. Prices of chemical and electronic products were also lower.
The government declared last month that Japan was in the grip of mild deflation.