Early on Thursday, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) posted January CPI inched up 0.2 percentage points over December 2015, driven mainly by robust market demand during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday and higher vegetable prices fueled by the cold weather.
Rising vegetable prices would likely shore up January and February CPI to some extent but they were short term fluctuations and was unlikely to affect the annual CPI much, said Zhao Chenxin, spokesperson of China's top economic planner - National Development and Reform Commission Wednesday.
After M1, a narrow measure of money supply, strode up in the fourth quarter of 2015, CPI in the first six months of 2016 was sure to be driven up, but by limited extent, said Lian Ping, chief economist of Bank of Communications previously. According to Lian, the low CPI growth in January of 2015 meant as high as 1.39 percent carryout effect for CPI in this January, which was once predicted to grow over two percent but trounced market players after NBS used new base data and lowered the proportion of food prices in CPI calculation in January.
In future, China's consumer prices are likely to present seasonal fluctuations but their effects on macro policy are very limited, Lian holds. Qu Hongbin, chief China economist with HSBC, however, urges debut of a basket of macro economy adjustment policies as soon as possible to crank up easing and spur demand. (Contributed by Duan Jing, duanjing@xinhua.org)
Latest comments