By South China Morning Post | Created at 2024-11-11 04:01:34 | Updated at 2024-11-18 03:37:48
6 days ago
1. Consumer inflation remains soft
China’s consumer price index (CPI), a key gauge of inflation, rose by 0.3 per cent year on year last month, slowing from an increase of 0.4 per cent in September.
The reading fell short of the 0.42 per cent growth projected by economists polled by Chinese financial data provider Wind and was the slowest growth in four months.
“The dip in the CPI inflation reading was mostly a result of food and energy price inflation,” said analysts at Nomura.
“In sequential terms, core and service CPI inflation both edged up to zero per cent month on month in October, but both were weaker than traditional seasonality suggests, which indicates domestic consumer demand remained soft.”
Food inflation fell back slightly from 3.3 per cent to 2.9 per cent as the adverse weather shock that boosted vegetable prices subsided, while energy prices also continued to fall, registering their biggest year-on-year decrease in 15 months, according to Gabriel Ng, assistant economist at Capital Economics.
