No concerns from Chinese consumer inflation data for March, but producer price deflation remains intense, although it again eased a little last month.
Figures out yesterday showed that China’s consumer prices rose because of food prices, especially the cost of pork.
The consumer-price index rose an annual 2.3% in March from March last year, unchanged from February.
Food prices jumped 7.6%, led by the higher costs for pork and vegetables, a product, the government said of a cold winter which lingered across much of the country.
The Statistics bureau said vegetable prices jumped nearly 36% year on year because of the winter, and pork prices were up 28%. Those rises will be unwound in coming months.
The market had been tipping a rise of 2.4% and the 2.3% rate in February and March was up from the 1.8% rate in January and 1.3% late last year.
China inflation remains tame
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In a sign there is no inflation pressures in the economy (more deflation), non-food prices rose just 1% from a year earlier, while they fell 0.4% from February. That is well below the official target rate of 3%.
Meanwhile producer prices fell 4.3% in March from a year ago, better than the forecast of minus 4.6% and the minus 4.9% reading in February, and the 5% plus falls seen in late 2015 and early this year.
There has been a slow continued easing in the rate of producer price deflation since January, when a five-month streak at minus5.9% finally ended. But the latest data shows that producer prices remained weighed by falling mining and raw material costs, especially oil, coal, iron ore, copper and other commodities. Month on month, producer prices rose half a per cent from February.
