China’s inflation eases to 1.9% in Sept

17 january 2013

BEIJING — China’s consumer price index, the main gauge of inflation, grew 1.9 percent year-on-year in September, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on Monday.

The inflation eased from 2 percent registered in August.

On a month-on-month basis, September’s CPI grew 0.3 percent from the previous month, according to the data released by the NBS.

Food prices, which account for nearly one-third of the weighting in the calculation of China’s CPI, rose 2.5 percent last month from one year earlier, which was down from the 3.4-percent increase in August.

China’s producer price index, which measures inflation at wholesale level, dropped 3.6 percent year-on-year in September. It marked the seventh straight month of decline after the PPI dropped in March for the first time since December 2009.

In the first nine months, the CPI grew 2.8 percent year-on-year on average, which further declined from the 3.3-percent rise in the first half of the year.

Xu Lianzhong, director of the Analysis and Prediction Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, predicted that the CPI was not likely to see a significant rebound in the remainder of the year.

Analysts also said that the country is poised to meet its target of keeping inflation under 4 percent for the full year.