China's PPI rises 8.8%, CPI 0.9% in Feb

China's producer price index, which gauges factory-gate prices, rose 8.8 percent year-on-year in Feb, down from 9.1 percent in the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.

The carryover effect of last year's prices changes contributed around 8.4 percentage points to the PPI growth, while new price increases contributed around 0.4 percentage points, the NBS data showed.

On a monthly basis, the PPI grew by 0.5 percent in Feb, compared with the 0.2 percent decrease in Jan.

China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, rose by 0.9 percent year-on-year in Feb, flat with a month ago, the NBS said.

The mild consumer inflation was mainly attributed to the decline of food prices with pork prices dropping 42.5 percent year-on-year in Feb. Prices of industrial consumer goods rose 3.1 percent year-on-year, up from 2.5 percent in the previous month, according to the NBS. On a month-on-month basis, the CPI grew by 0.6 percent, compared with a 0.4 percent decrease in Jan.

The growth in core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices and is deemed as a better gauge of the supply-demand relationship in the economy, came in at 1.1 percent in Feb, down from 1.2 percent in the previous month.

Dong Lijuan, a senior NBS statistician, attributed the accelerated month-on-month growth of consumer inflation to factors related to the Spring Festival holiday and the fluctuations in global energy prices, saying the month-on-month growth in PPI is affected by rising prices of global commodities such as crude oil and nonferrous metals.

ouyangshijia@chinadaily.com.cn