BEIJING, China’s inflation remained subdued last month, with the country’s consumer price index (CPI) rising by 1 percent year-on-year in February, as reported by Xinhua news agency citing official data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). This was lower than the 2.1 percent increase recorded in January. On a monthly basis, consumer prices declined by 0.5 percent, reversing the 0.8 percent increase seen in the previous month. The NBS attributed the drop in prices to lower food prices, particularly for pork and vegetables, as well as falling costs for non-food items such as travel, cinema tickets, and services like haircuts and housekeeping. China’s core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, increased by 0.6 percent year-on-year in February, down from 1 percent in January. The NBS also reported that China’s producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, declined by 1.4 percent year-on-year and remained unchanged on a monthly basis in February. According to Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician at the NBS, the PPI remained flat on a monthly basis due to the acceleration of production recovery for industrial enterprises and improved market demand, but the year-on-year decline continued due to a high comparison base from the same period last year. The government work report recently announced a target of keeping CPI increase around 3 percent this year, which is the same as last year’s goal. In 2022, China’s consumer prices increased by 2 percent from a year earlier.
Source: Emirates News Agency