No problems with Chinese inflation for April with producer price inflation rising for the first time in seven months and consumer price inflation about steady.
Thanks to higher commodity prices (especially for oil) producer price inflation rose 0.3% year on year to be up 3.4% on an annual basis from April last year.
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics a 4.5% was responsible for the higher than forecast rise.
Meanwhile, consumer prices lifted marginally last month as a 16% drop in pork prices mostly offset broadly higher prices for food.
The official consumer price index rose 1.8% year on year in April. That was down from a 2.1% increase in March and just off a forecast 1.9% increase.
The core consumer price index, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, rose 2.0% in April, unchanged from March.
The food price index rose 0.7% on-year, down sharply from the 2.1% jump in March.
Non-food prices rose 2.1% the same pace as the previous month.
But watch the impact of four year highs for oil prices as the impact of President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran deal sends global prices higher.
With the solid trade data earlier in the week, there’s no problem so far as the Chinese economy is concerned at the moment. Next week we get industrial production, investment and retail sales figures.
