A citizen buys vegetables at a supermarket in Handan City, north China's Hebei Province, Jan. 9, 2020. China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.9 percent year on year in 2019, within government target of 3 percent, official data showed Thursday. (Photo: Xinhua)

China's consumer inflation ran at a low level in April, with a 0.9 percent gain year-on-year, while inflation at the gate of manufacturing factories continued on an upward trend due to high international bulk commodity prices, official data showed on Tuesday.

The consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, went up 0.9 percent in April from the prior year, an increase of 0.5 percentage point month-on-month, according to figures unveiled by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday.

Non-food price rose 1.3 percent year-on-year in April, contributing about 1.05 percentage points to CPI expansion, Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician with the NBS, said in a statement posted on the bureau's website.

Thanks to China's successful control of the pandemic and the factor of holidays, travel figures are on rise. The price of air ticket, gasoline and diesel jumped 26.9 percent, 20.1 percent and 21.9 percent, respectively, last month, according to the NBS.

Along with a rapid recovery of live hog output and a drop in market demand, the price of pork plunged a whopping 21.4 percent year-on-year in April, which makes a considerable contribute to low CPI in April.

The producer price index (PPI), a measure of factory gate prices, kept growing in yearly terms.

The PPI rallied 6.8 percent in April year-on-year, beating analysts' forecast of a 6.5 percent, which also marks an increase of 2.4 percent from March.

Reflecting on the PPI upsurge on a yearly basis, Dong said that manufacturing material prices rose 9.1 percent in April, quickening by 3.3 percentage points from March, while prices of consumer goods were edging up 0.3 percent in April.

Among the industries that saw bigger price increases were petroleum and natural gas extraction, smelting and pressing of both ferrous and non-ferrous metals, and chemical raw materials and chemical product manufacturing, the statement said.

With the continuous recovery of domestic manufacturing, the PPI expansion is projected to exceed 7 percent in May and hover at a relatively elevated level in the second half of the year, Li Chang'an, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

However, the PPI staying at a high level may not lead to tightening of the country's monetary policy, given continuous downward pressure of the domestic economy, Li said, adding that the ample liquidity on the money market is unlikely to change. 

Global Times