A new low in China's factory gate inflation

China’s factory-gate inflation cooled in July to the lowest it’s been since February 2021, the National Bureau of Statistics has said on Wednesday.

China’s producer price index, which gauges factory-gate prices, increased 4.2 percent year-on-year in July, following a 6.1 percent rise from the previous month, the NBS said.

The carryover effect of last year’s price changes contributed around 3.2 percentage points to the PPI growth, while new price increases contributed around 1 percentage point, NBS data showed.

On a monthly basis, the PPI declined 1.3 percent in July.

China’s consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, rose by 2.7 percent year-on-year in July, following a 2.5 percent rise in the previous month, the NBS data showed.

Compared to a year ago, food prices increased 6.3 percent, against a 2.9 percent gain in June, resulting in a rise of around 1.12 percentage points in headline CPI. Notably, pork prices jumped 20.2 percent on a yearly basis, compared with a 6 percent decline in the previous month.

On a month-on-month basis, the CPI rose by 0.5 percent.

The growth in core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices and is deemed as a better gauge of the supply-demand relationship in the economy, came in at 0.8 percent year-on-year in July, following a 1 percent rise in the previous month.