MNI BRIEF: China's Dec CPI Rises; PPI Continues Decline
China's December Consumer Price Index rose to 1.8% y/y, in line with the median forecast of 1.8%, and faster than November’s 1.6% y/y pace as entertainment sector and traffic recovered after the covid reopening, and food costs increased, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released on Thursday showed.
Pork prices, the main CPI driver, rose by 22.2% y/y, compared with 34.4% the previous month, while price of flight tickets jumped 26.7%, up 7.8 percentage points from November, the NBS said.
Core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 0.7% y/y compared to 0.6% in November. For the whole year, CPI rose 2.0%, compared with 0.9% in 2021.
The Producer Price Index fell at a 0.7% y/y pace in December, the 14th consecutive month of decrease, but the pace of decline narrowed in December from a fall of 1.3% y/y in November. On a monthly basis, PPI fell 0.5%, decelerating from the previous 0.1% gain. Overall PPI was up 4.1% in 2022, from 8.1% last year.