8
December 2017
PDF version [290KB]
Gregory
O'Brien
Statistics and Mapping Section
This Quick Guide provides a summary of
key online resources which provide commodity price data. The first section
provides a reference table for five key publications by commodity. The second
section provides a longer list of important sources for commodity price data
from both international and Australian organisations.
Commodity price data included in
key sources
Table 1 provides a quick summary of the major commodity
prices reported in five key publications which provide broad coverage of
agricultural and resource commodities. The five sources included in the table
are:
While these
five sources are not comprehensive, they include the majority of the key
commodities of interest to the Australian economy, are updated regularly and
provide either the latest data available or long time-series data for these
commodities.
Table One: Guide to commodity price
data by source
| Commodity |
IMF |
ABARES |
LME |
REQ |
WSJ |
| Period covered: |
M: From 1980
W: Last 8 weeks |
Varies - from 1970 |
Last trading day, futures to 3 years |
A: Last 7 years
Q: Last 8 quarters |
Most recent price |
| Alumina |
|
|
|
A, M |
|
| Aluminium |
M, W |
|
D, F |
A, Q, M |
D |
| Bananas |
M, W |
|
|
|
|
| Barley |
M, W |
A, M |
|
|
D |
| Beef |
M, W |
A, Q, M |
|
|
D |
| Butter |
|
A |
|
|
D |
| Canola |
|
A |
|
|
|
| Cheese |
|
A |
|
|
D |
| Coal, Thermal |
M, W |
|
|
A, Q |
|
| Coal, Metallurgical |
|
|
|
A, Q |
|
| Cocoa Beans |
M, W |
|
|
|
D |
| Coffee |
M, W |
|
|
|
D |
| Copper |
M, W |
|
D, F |
A, Q, M |
D |
| Corn (Maize) |
M, W |
A, M |
|
|
D |
| Cotton |
M, W |
A |
|
|
D |
| Crude Oil |
M, W |
|
|
A, Q |
|
| Fertilisers |
|
|
|
|
|
| Gold |
|
|
|
A, Q |
D |
| Iron Ore |
M, W |
|
|
A, Q |
D |
| Lamb |
M, W |
A, Q, M |
|
|
|
| Lead |
M, W |
|
D, F |
A, M, Q |
|
| Manganese |
|
|
|
A, Q |
|
| Milk |
|
A |
|
|
D |
| Natural Gas |
M, W |
|
|
|
D |
| Nickel |
M, W |
|
D, F |
A, Q, M |
|
| Oats |
|
A, M |
|
|
D |
| Olive Oil |
M, W |
|
|
|
|
| Palm Oil |
M, W |
A |
|
|
|
| Phosphate |
|
|
|
A, Q |
D |
| Pork |
M, W |
A, Q, M |
|
|
|
| Poultry (chicken) |
M, W |
A, Q |
|
|
|
| Rapeseed Oil |
M, W |
|
|
|
|
| Rice |
M, W |
A |
|
|
D |
| Rubber |
M, W |
|
|
|
|
| Silver |
|
|
|
A, Q, M |
D |
| Sorghum |
|
A, M |
|
|
D |
| Soybean oil |
M, W |
|
|
|
D |
| Soybeans |
M, W |
A |
|
|
D |
| Sugar |
M, W |
A |
|
|
|
| Sunflower oil |
M, W |
|
|
|
|
| Timber |
M, W |
A |
|
|
|
| Tin |
M, W |
|
D, F |
A, Q, M |
|
| Uranium |
M, W |
|
|
|
|
| Wheat |
M, W |
A, M |
|
|
D |
| Woodchips |
|
A |
|
|
|
| Wool |
M, W |
A |
|
|
D |
| Zinc |
M, W |
|
D, F |
A, Q, M |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| D |
Daily |
M |
Monthly |
A |
Annual |
| W |
Weekly |
Q |
Quarterly |
F |
Futures |
Publications providing commodity
price data
International Organisations
The International Monetary Fund
(IMF)
The International Monetary Fund provides research on primary commodity
prices, including agricultural commodities, metals and energy resources.
They publish the following price series:
- Indices
of commodity prices in USD terms, including annual and monthly percentage
changes
- Indices
of commodity price groupings (all primary commodities, edibles, food, metals,
etc.)
- Market
prices in USD for primary commodities on an annual, quarterly, and monthly
basis through to the latest complete month. This data is also available for
download in excel format under the heading ‘monthly data’ on the primary commodity
price homepage
-
Projections for commodity prices on a quarterly basis in the
short term (1-2 years) and on an annual basis for the medium term (5 years),
downloadable in excel format from the primary commodity
price homepage and
- The primary
commodity price homepage also provides access to the commodity quarterly
review, commodity market review, and commodity market monthly, reports which
provide analysis, forecasts, and risk assessments for commodity prices.
The World Bank
The World Bank’s
commodity markets portal includes long-term time series of monthly or
annual prices for major global commodities, as well as long-term (10-years
plus) price forecasts for these commodities. This page also provides access to
the World Bank’s publications on commodity prices, the Commodity Markets
Outlook, chart data from this publication, blog posts, and short articles
on commodity prices.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)
The Wall
Street Journal’s market data center provides the latest daily spot prices
for a wide range of energy, precious and industrial metals, agricultural and
food commodities. Futures
data is also available for many of these commodities.
London Metal Exchange (LME)
The London Metal Exchange provides daily closing
prices from the previous trading day for the major industrial metals traded on
the exchange. Also available are monthly
average settlement price reports, which include futures contract pricing.
The LME also produces a number of additional reports which can be accessed with
a free online registration.
Australian
Organisations
Department of Industry, Innovation
and Science, Office of the Chief Economist
The Office
of the Chief Economist within the Department of Industry, Innovation and
Science publishes the Resources
and Energy Quarterly publication. This includes a table of commodity
prices (currently table 22 of the ‘historical data’ spreadsheet), with annual
and monthly data (through to three months before the publication date) for
selected commodities (alumina, aluminium, gold, iron ore, thermal coal,
metallurgical coal, West Texas Intermediate crude oil, Brent crude oil, and
metals). These tables can be downloaded under the ‘data’ heading.
Australian Bureau of Agricultural
and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)
ABARES
produces many publications which include price data for agricultural
commodities. The flagship commodity
statistical publications are Agricultural commodity statistics,
published annually, and Agricultural commodities, published quarterly.
These publications include long time series for major agricultural commodities
(the annual publication has longer time-series than the quarterly publication).
Specialist publications for agricultural sectors often include more detailed
price data for specific agricultural industries.
The bi-annual Australian
forest and wood products statistics publication provides price indexes
and trade unit values for forest and wood products.
Reserve Bank of Australia
(RBA)
The RBA produces several aggregate indexes
of commodity prices in both AUD and USD series. Indexes provided on a
monthly basis include aggregate commodity prices, rural commodity prices,
non-rural commodity prices, base metals prices, and bulk commodities prices.
These monthly indexes provide price movement data back to 1982. Charts of these
series are produced by the RBA for inclusion in the chart pack.
Meat and Livestock
Australia (MLA)
Meat and Livestock
Australia publishes daily indicators on their webpage for key cattle and
sheep prices, and provides detailed data through their statistics database on
livestock prices (cattle, goat, lamb and sheep) and meat prices (export,
import, retail and wholesale).
Dairy Australia
The annual Australian Dairy in Focus
publication includes data on milk prices and selected other dairy product
pricing.
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