China’s April CPI rises 2.1% as global commodity prices surge
▶ Inflation ‘ generally controllable’ thanks to govt efforts
China’s consumer price index rose by its fastest annual pace in five months in April, amid domestic COVID- 19 flare- ups and rising international commodity prices, according to official data on Wednesday.
Though consumer prices may further increase due to both domestic and external factors, China’s inflation remains generally controllable, especially when compared to sky- high inflation in many major economies around the world, thanks to the country’s measures to ensure supplies and stabilize prices, analysts noted.
China’s April consumer price index ( CPI) rose 2.1 percent year- on- year, up from 1.5 percent in March, the National Bureau of Statistics ( NBS) said on Wednesday.
The figure beat some market expectations of a 1.8- percent growth. The increase was mainly caused by rising food and oil prices, NBS data showed.
Month- on- month, food prices swung to a gain in April from a decline in March due to rising logistics costs amid the epidemic and increased demand for stockpiling, said Dong Lijuan, a statistician at the NBS.
Food prices rose 0.9 percent month- on- month in April, compared with a 1.2- percent decline in March, contributing about 0.17 percentage points to the CPI increase, the NBS said.
Analysts said that China’s consumer prices will continue to rise moderately but overall inflation will be controllable.
The latest COVID- 19 outbreaks, combined with volatile energy costs, rising pork prices and the low base effect, will drive up inflation in the short term, Zhou Maohua, a macroeconomic analyst at Everbright Bank, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
But as the epidemic is gradually brought under control and the government takes measures to ensure supplies, stabilize prices and unclog logistics, agricultural and industrial products will return to normal levels, Zhou said.
However, in the short term, the impact of international geopolitics and the global pandemic will persist, and the risk of imported inflation needs to be prevented, Zhou added.
Meanwhile, producer price growth continued to moderate in April for a sixth straight month. The producer price index ( PPI) increased 8 per- cent from a year earlier, slower than the 8.3- percent rise in March but higher than the expected rate of 7.8 percent.