South Korea and the NSW governments put their major cities under tougher lockdowns as Covid Delta variant infections showed no sign of easing.
The moves to put Seoul and Sydney under tougher social distancing and movement rules followed Thursday’s move by the Japanese government to declare a state of emergency for the Tokyo region and the Olympics and ban spectators at the games.
News of the new lockdowns saw share prices in Japan, South Korea, China and Australia all fall on Friday.
China’s June consumer and producer price inflation came in a bit better than forecast as that country starts its monthly release of major economic data next week.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed the CPI slowed to an annual 1.1% rate from 1.3% in May. That was a surprise fall as the market had been looking for a rise after May’s 8 month high.
On a monthly basis, consumer prices unexpectedly dropped by 0.4% in June, the fourth straight monthly fall, after a 0.2% drop in May and compared with forecasts of a flat reading.
That fall suggests the slowdown in Chinese economic activity is a bit more serious than previously revealed.
Core inflation rose an annual 0.9% in June up from 0.7% in May.
The major influence in the slide in headline inflation was a faster that forecast fall in food prices – down an annual 1.7% in June from the 0.3% rise in May.
Pork prices slumped 36.5% in the month against a 23.8% drop in May.
China’s producer price index, which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, rose 8.8% year on year in June, after a 9% rise in May.
That’s still the highest for more than 12 years and, with the fall in June suggests China’s’s crackdown on rising commodity prices in June had little impact.
The weaker consumer price data also suggests China’s huge manufacturing sector is not passing on the impact of higher commodity costs for products like oil, copper, iron ore and other products.
The inflation data is the start of the usual monthly economic data dump – Monday sees car sales, bank loans and money supply figures released, then trade data for June, the June quarter and the first six months of 2021.
Thursday sees house price data and the monthly and half year (and quarterly) figures on industrial production, urban investment retail sales and the important second quarter GDP figures.
