China’s consumer inflation flat in September, factory-gate prices fall for 12th month in a row
- China’s consumer price index (CPI) flat from a year earlier in September, down from August and well below Beijing’s annual target
- Producer price index (PPI) fell for a 12th month in a row, with factory-gate price deflation narrowing to minus 2.5 per cent
China’s consumer prices remained flat in September, despite signs of an economic rebound, with deepening chronic deflationary pressure and stubbornly weak domestic demand still looming large.
That is lower than the average economist’s estimate of a 0.2 per cent rise, as surveyed by Wind, a China data provider.
CPI in the first nine months of the year rose by 0.4 per cent, year on year – far below Beijing’s annual control target of 3 per cent.
Within CPI, overall food prices dropped last month by 3.2 per cent, year on year, while pork prices, which have a high weighting in China’s CPI basket, fell by 22 per cent, compared with a year-on-year fall of 17.9 per cent in August.
Services prices, meanwhile, rose by 1.3 per cent, in September compared with a year earlier.
Core inflation, which receives more attention from policymakers as it excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose by 0.8 per cent last month, following 0.8 per cent growth in August.