Price pressure on China’s manufacturing sector fell in June as coronavirus impact eased

China’s producer price index (PPI) fell 3.0 per cent year on year in June after declining 3.7 per cent in May

Consumer inflation rose 2.5 per cent from a year earlier, up from a 2.4 per cent gain in May

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China’s consumer price index (CPI) rose 2.5 per cent from a year earlier. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 9:57am, 9 Jul 2020Updated: 10:48pm, 9 Jul 2020

Pressure on China’s manufacturing sector eased in June following the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, data released on Thursday showed.

The producer price index (PPI), reflecting the prices that factories charge wholesalers for their products, fell 3.0 per cent year on year in June, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.

That was lower than May’s reading of a 3.7 per cent decline and lower than the 3.2 per cent contraction tipped by analysts in a survey by Bloomberg.

The drop in PPI narrowed in June as “international commodity prices picked up, domestic manufacturing steadily recovered, and market demand continued to improve,” the NBS said in a statement accompanying the data.

Producer prices rose last month for the first time since the outbreak of Covid-19, adding to evidence that industrial demand had mostly recovered by the end of quarter two

Martin Rasmussen

The consumer price index (CPI), meanwhile, rose 2.5 per cent from a year earlier, up from a 2.4 per cent gain in May, the NBS said. Analysts had expected an inflation rate of 2.5 per cent.