Anxious Chinese Producer Prices Stabilize... 10.3% Increase (Comprehensive)

PPI Declines for 2 Consecutive Months as Prices of Coal and Others Stabilize
Last Year's Consumer Prices Rose Only 0.9%, Significantly Below Early-Year Target of 3%

[Asia Economy Beijing=Special Correspondent Jo Young-shin] China's Producer Price Index (PPI) for December last year showed a decline for the second consecutive month. Due to rising international raw material prices, China's PPI had surged to 13.5% in October last year.

China PPI (Photo by China National Bureau of Statistics)

China's National Bureau of Statistics announced on the 12th that the PPI growth rate for December last year was 10.3%. This is lower than the previous month's 12.9% and below the market forecast of 11.1%.

China's monthly PPI growth rate soared to 13.5% in October last year, the highest in 25 years since 1996, due to the surge in global raw material prices, but has been declining for two consecutive months since then.

There is an analysis that China's PPI, which had shown instability due to rising international raw material prices, is now stabilizing.

Dong Lijuan, a statistician at the National Bureau of Statistics, explained, "As the effects of supply guarantee and price stabilization policies continue to appear, prices of some international raw materials such as crude oil have fallen, leading to a decline in prices of manufactured goods."

China CPI (Photo by National Bureau of Statistics of China)

The National Bureau of Statistics stated that the PPI in December last year fell by 1.2% compared to the previous month, with prices of coal, metal smelting such as iron, non-ferrous metals, international crude oil, chemical raw materials, and products dropping, causing the PPI to decline for two consecutive months.

Specifically, prices fell broadly: coal processing by 15.4%, metal smelting such as iron by 4.4%, non-ferrous metals by 1.4%, refined petroleum products by 4.0%, and chemical raw materials and products by 2.1%.

As the PPI showed a downward trend, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by only 1.5% year-on-year in December. The CPI growth rate in November was 2.3%.

Prices of food-related products such as pork led the decline, and gasoline and diesel prices fell by 5.4% and 5.8%, respectively, due to the drop in international crude oil prices. The CPI in major cities rose by 1.6%, while rural CPI increased by 1.2%.

Last year, China's CPI rose by 0.9% year-on-year, significantly below the Chinese government's early-year management limit of around 3%. This year, the Chinese government's CPI management target is around 5%.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.