(Bloomberg) -- China’s consumer prices rose in December after briefly declining in the previous month, while factory gate deflation eased further, providing more evidence of the country’s economic recovery.
- The consumer price index rose 0.2% last month from a year earlier, following a 0.5% decline in November, the National Bureau of Statistics data said Monday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists was for it to be unchanged
- Factory deflation narrowed, with the producer price index registering a 0.4% decline, compared with a 1.5% drop in November and a median forecast for a 0.7% decline
Key Insights
- Pork prices, a key element in the country’s CPI basket, fell 1.3% in December from a year earlier after plunging 12.5% in November
- Core inflation, which removes the more volatile food and energy prices, eased to 0.4%
- Economists at Standard Chartered (OTC:SCBFF) Plc had expected a rebound in pork prices and a pick-up in travel-related prices during the New Year holidays to help buoy inflation
- China’s economic recovery remained on track in December while showing signs of plateauing. Both the manufacturing and non-manufacturing purchasing managers’ indexes slid, but economists say the growth momentum stayed solid. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect gross domestic product to expand 6% in the fourth quarter of 2020 from a year earlier, which would be the quickest growth all year
- The recent coronavirus outbreak in Shijiazhuang, a city near Beijing, and sporadic cases around the country, are unlikely to derail China’s recovery, but the extremely cold weather this winter does present challenges for authorities seeking to contain the virus
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