China's CPI up 2.2 pct, PPI up 2.7 pct in November

China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.2 percent year on year in November, down from 2.5 percent in October, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Sunday.

Customers buy vegetables at a supermarket in Fuyang, Anhui Province, on November 9, 2018. [File photo: IC]

Food prices climbed 2.5 percent year on year, contributing to a 0.49-percentage-point increase of the overall CPI growth, the bureau said.

The price of pork continued to slump in November, down 1.1 percent year on year, dragging down CPI growth by 0.03 percentage points.

Prices for health care gained 2.6 percent year on year, and education, culture and entertainment rose 2.5 percent, while prices for housing, and transport and communication rose 2.4 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively, the NBS said.

Non-food prices saw a 2.1-percent gain year on year in November, slowing from 2.4 percent last month.

On a monthly basis, the CPI dipped 0.3 percent from October.

In the Jan.-Nov. period, the CPI gained 2.1 percent from the previous year, well below the government's target ceiling of 3 percent for 2018, data from the NBS showed.

Sunday's data also showed producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, rose 2.7 percent year on year in November, with the growth declining for five consecutive months.

The carryover effect contributed 0.8 percentage points to the PPI growth, while new factors contributed 1.9 percentage points, the NBS statistician Sheng Guoqing said.

The prices of the means of production rose 3.3 percent year on year, contributing 2.47 percentage points to the PPI growth in November.

Of major industrial sectors, producer prices in the sectors of oil and natural gas exploitation, processing of oil, coal and other fuels, chemical raw materials and products, ferrous metal smelting and processing saw slower growth in November compared with the previous month. The above four sectors dragged down PPI growth by 0.74 percentage points year on year.

On a monthly basis, the PPI edged down 0.2 percent.

For the first 11 months, producer prices at the factory gate rose 3.8 percent from the same period last year.