© Reuters. A man pays for meat at a market in Beijing, China, January 11, 2021. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang/Files
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s factory prices fell more than economists expected in January, suggesting that flashes of domestic demand that boosted consumer prices after the end of the zero-epidemic COVID policy are not yet strong enough to restart upstream sectors.
The producer price index (PPI) fell 0.8% from a year earlier, extending the previous month’s 0.7% decline and faster than the 0.5% decline forecast in a Reuters poll.
The consumer price index (CPI) in January was 2.1% higher than a year earlier, which is higher than the annual growth of 1.8% recorded in December, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Friday. but only slightly below the 2.2% increase predicted by economists in a Reuters poll.
Economists expect the cost of living in China to rise over the coming months and inflation to move closer to the around 3% target set by the government last year.
(This story has been corrected to read ‘falling’ in the title, instead of ‘slow’)