CPI Photo: VCG

China's consumer price index (CPI), the main gauge of inflation, rose in November due to growing production cost, extreme weather patterns and sporadic coronavirus flare-ups, but the growth rate of the CPI is slowing, a senior statistician said on Thursday. 

CPI in November rose in year-on-year terms by 2.3 percent, expanding from a 0.8 percent increase in October, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday.

In addition to the impact of new price increases in November, the year-on-year expansion mainly affected by a lower base in the same period last year, senior NBA statistician Dong Lijuan said.

The central bank's 50 basis-point cut in the reserve requirement ratio for lenders, as well as the effective control of the virus will boost domestic consumption, and the CPI will maintain stable in the coming months, Cong Yi, a professor from the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Thursday.

The growth rate of CPI slowed 0.3 percentage point month-on-month. In November, food prices rose by 2.4 percent, an increase of 0.7 percentage points over the previous month, affecting the CPI rise by about 0.43 percentage points, while non-food prices remained flat.

Vegetable prices in November plummeted 9.8 percentage points over the previous month amid efforts to ensure vegetable supply, while pork price rose 12.2 percent due to seasonal demand hike and short-term supply constraints of hogs, according to Dong.

"The slowdown of the growth rate belongs to short-term fluctuation, and the whole year's CPI rise will likely stay at 0.9 percent," Zhou Jingtong, a senior economist from the Academy of the Bank of China, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Apart from CPI, the producer price index (PPI) climbed 12.9 percent from a year earlier in November, with prices across 37 out of 40 industrial sectors increasing, but growth rate is slowing due to declining production costs, Cong said.

Zhou predicted that the growth is expected to slow down amid the country's policies to stabilize supply of coal, metals and other raw materials.

Global Times