BEIJING: China’s consumer price index (CPI), a key gauge of retail inflation, fell to minus 0.5 percent in November from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Wednesday. It entered negative territory for the first time since October 2009, as food prices dropped.
The fall in November was compared with the 0.5-percent rise in October, as the Reuters poll predicted no change in consumer prices. The decline was also below the 0-percent fall forecasted by the Bloomberg survey. “China’s consumer inflation in November surprised the market by entering negative territory — a result from rapidly improved pork supply as well as a weaker-than-expected domestic consumer market,” Wang Dan, chief economist with Hang Seng Bank (China) told CGTN. The fall in CPI was due to the high comparison base in the same period last year, according to Dong Lijuan, a senior NBS statistician. It was led by a 2-percent decline in food price, including a 12.5-percent drop in pork price and a 19.1-percent decrease in egg price.
The negative CPI inflation in November does not mean China’s economy is experiencing deflation, according to Lu Ting, chief China economist at Nomura.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN News exchange item
