91.   The decline in import prices follows lower-than-expected October consumer prices reported by four Western German states.

92.   The dollar rally helps keep foreign investment in the U.S. Treasury debt market high and lowers import prices, a check on inflation.

93.   The exchange figures used to calculate the December import prices are averages for November.

94.   The drop in import prices helped push down Western German consumer prices in the month to mid-October.

95.   The high dollar also helped keep inflation down by keeping import prices low.

96.   The flip side of the strong dollar, though, is that import prices and some commodity prices are edging higher.

97.   The increase, they said, was mostly a result of import prices, which have risen on the stronger dollar.

98.   The near absence of inflation has been helped by lower commodity prices and cheaper import prices.

99.   The overall WPI, which measures changes in wholesale prices in Japan, is an aggregate of the indexes for domestic prices, export prices and import prices.

100.   The only risk to the economy is from the rising dollar, which is expected to push up import prices, according the Central Planning Bureau.