China's Inflation Rises Slightly; Producer Price Inflation Weakest In 13 Months
10 January 2018 - 12:46PM
RTTF2
China's inflation rose less than expected in December and
producer prices logged its weakest growth in more than a year as
government stepped up measures to tackle pollution.
Consumer price inflation rose moderately to 1.8 percent from 1.7
percent in November, the National Bureau of Statistics reported
Wednesday. The rate was forecast to rise to 1.9 percent.
Food prices fell 0.4 percent, following a 1.1 percent decrease
in November. Meanwhile, non-food prices rose at a slightly slower
pace of 2.4 percent.
For the whole year of 2017, inflation was 1.6 percent, which was
well below the government's target of around 3 percent.
Producer price inflation slowed to 4.9 percent in December from
5.8 percent in November, the NBS said in a separate communique.
This was the slowest increase since November 2016. The expected
rate was 4.8 percent.
In 2017 as a whole, producer prices gained 6.3 percent.
Looking ahead, Julian Evans-Pritchard, an economist at Capital
Economics, said inflation will continue to drop back in the coming
quarters as economic activity softens.
With a further decline in producer price inflation, which is
highly correlated with earnings growth among indebted industrial
firms, will help push the People's Bank of China to ease monetary
policy over the course of this year, the economist added.
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