China's Consumer Price Index (CPI) in January went up by 0.2% month-on-month and 0.2% year-on-year, according to China's National Bureau of Statistcis.
The core CPI, excluding food and energy prices, rose by 0.8% year-on-year.
Affected by factors such as increased demand in some industries and the transmission of international commodity prices, the Producer Price Index (PPI) for industrial producers in January rose by 0.4% month-on-month but declined by 1.4% year-on-year.
Dong Lijuan, chief statistician of the Urban Division at the NBS, said that the year-on-year growth of the CPI in January slowed mainly due to two reasons: First, the Chinese New Year timing shift. Last January coincided with the Chinese New Year, leading to higher food and certain service prices, which caused a higher base for comparison. Second, changes in international oil prices caused a greater drop in energy prices. In January, energy prices fell by 5.0%, which contributed to a 0.34 percentage point decrease in the year-on-year CPI, with the downward impact on CPI year-on-year being about 0.06 percentage points larger than the previous month.
Among the energy items, gasoline prices fell by 11.4% year-on-year, a larger decline compared to the previous month by 3.0 percentage points. Despite these factors, consumption demand continued to recover, and the trend of moderate increases in the core CPI remained unchanged.
Explore more exclusive insights at nextfin.ai.
