国际英语新闻：Japan's wholesale prices rise 1.6% year on year in Jan.

TOKYO, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- Japan's wholesale prices rose 1.6 percent in January from a year earlier, marking the fourth straight month of increase, the Bank of Japan said on Thursday.

The 1.6 percent rise prices logged in the recording period beat median economists' forecasts for a 1.2 percent gain.

On a monthly basis the index rose 0.5 percent in January to 103. 9, beating forecasts for an increase of 0.3 percent and following a 0.4 percent gain booked in December.

The central bank's data showed that export prices rose 0.1 percent on month, but retreated 3.4 percent on year. This follows a revised 1.1 percent monthly gain and a revised 2.0 percent annual decline in December.

In addition, the Bank of Japan noted that import prices rose 2. 1 percent on month and 4.7 percent on year, following a revised 3. 0 percent on month and a revised 4.2 percent on year, booked in the previous month.

The bank has highlighted that rising commodity prices such as for crude oil and nonferrous metals and growing demand in Asia is supporting Japan's rising wholesale prices.

For the whole of 2010, the central bank said that the domestic corporate goods price index read 102.8, a drop of 0.2 percent on the year and marked the second straight year of contraction, however the rate of decline was far less than the 5.2 percent drop logged in 2009, according to official data from Japan's central bank.

The corporate goods price index in Japan, on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis, is comprehensively tracked as these supply-side price pressures and increases in the index often precede upward movement in the CPI.

If a decrease in the CGPI is followed by a fall in the CPI, however, concerns about deflation may prompt the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates, if the situation is reversed the opposite will happen.

The headline numbers are the percentage change in the index month or month and annually.