China’s pork price rockets 97 per cent in December, keeping inflation at eight-year high

Pressure increases on Chinese government to arrest pork crisis amid African Swine fever outbreak, with Lunar New Year approaching, where pork is a vital dish

The consumer price index (CPI) rose by 4.5 per cent in December, while the producer price index (PPI) continued to fall, dropping by 0.5 per cent last month

Reading Time:4 minutes

Pork prices rose by 97.0 per cent in December from a year earlier, sending consumer inflation soaring. Photo: Xinhua

Finbarr Berminghamin Brussels,Karen Yeungin Hong KongandOrange Wang

Published: 9:49am, 9 Jan 2020Updated: 4:40pm, 12 May 2020

China’s consumer inflation rose by 4.5 per cent from a year earlier in the last month of the decade, amid an African swine fever crisis which sent pork prices soaring by 97.0 per cent year on year.

Last month’s increase in the consumer price index (CPI) was flat from November, which was the highest since January 2012, and below an analyst poll by Bloomberg, which forecast 4.7 per cent growth.

Within the CPI, food prices rose by 17.4 per cent in December from a year earlier, with pork prices nearly doubling, new data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday showed. Prices for beef, mutton, chicken, duck and eggs rose between 7.3 per cent and 20.4 per cent, while vegetable prices were also up 10.8 per cent.

Non-food prices rose 1.3 per cent, while consumer goods prices rose 6.4 per cent and services prices increased 1.2 per cent.

China’s producer price index (PPI), the price manufacturers charge at the factory gate, remained in contraction for the sixth consecutive month at minus 0.5 per cent year-on-year in December, from minus 1.4 per cent in November. The figure was in line analysts’ forecasts of minus 1.4 per cent.