China’s producer prices grew at the fastest pace in more than 5 years last month as consumer inflation climbed higher on food and fuel costs.
The fifth consecutive month of expansion for China’s producer price index reported by the National Bureau of Statistics came in at 6.9 per cent, the fastest pace since August 2011 and beat a median forecast of 6.3 per cent from economists surveyed by Reuters.
The statistics bureau noted that 33 out of the 40 industries tracked by the gauge saw prices rise in January. But growth was concentrated primarily in the same sectors as in previous months, with oil and gas extraction, coal extraction and washing, smelting and processing of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, petroleum processing and chemicals and chemical goods production together accounting for 5.7 percentage points of the headline figure.