China CPI hits 5.4 pct in six-month period
Beijing. July 13. INTERFAX-CHINA - China's Consumer Price Index (CPI), a benchmark indicator of inflation, rose by 5.40 percent year-on-year for the first half (H1) of 2011, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced July 13.
The data was released days after the NBS announced that June's CPI rose by a higher-than-expected 6.40 percent, the largest increase so far this year. China's CPI has exceeded the central government's inflation target of four percent per month this year.
Fu Peng, an analyst with China Galaxy Securities Co. Ltd., expected last month's CPI to rise by between 5.50 percent and six percent. Zhang Zhuoyuan, an economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, had forecast a six percent hike.
China's red-hot inflation rate has been largely fueled by rocketing pork prices, which weighs heavily in the basket of goods used to calculate the CPI, Fu told Interfax July 13.
A combination of strong demand from the expanding middle class and a low pig population - caused by culling in previous years to halt livestock disease outbreaks - has sent China's pork prices soaring. The average wholesale pork prices in China reached a three-year high of RMB 24.68 ($3.82) per kilogram during the fourth week of June, Interfax previously reported.
Meanwhile, cotton prices surged 52.60 percent from a year earlier, while sugar and edible oil prices increased 32.30 percent and 11.80 percent, respectively, the NBS said.
- LYB
