China’s consumer inflation index hits 32-month-high of 5.4 percent
April 16th, 2011 - 2:09 pm ICT by ANIBeijing, Apr 16 (ANI): China’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose to a 32-month- high of 5.4 percent in March from the same month last year, said the country’s statistics agency.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), CPI, a main gauge of inflation stood at 5 percent for the first quarter.
Food prices, which accounted for a third of the basket of goods in China’s CPI calculation, surged 11 percent year on year, while housing costs jumped 6.5 percent.
“Imported inflation has strongly contributed to the domestic price hike,” Xinhua quoted NBS spokesperson Sheng Laiyun, as saying.
“To contain CPI growth to 5 percent for the quarter is a hard-earned victory amid abundant liquidity globally and widespread inflation in emerging economies,” Sheng said.
He said China’s March inflation data was still lower than 6.3 percent for Brazil, 9.5 percent for Russia.
Sun Chi, an analyst with the Nomura Securities, said inflation pressure would persist for a period of time, which indicated it was only early days in the monetary tightening circle.
Earlier, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said keeping price levels stable was the most urgent task for the government this year.
“Judging from the inflation situation in the first quarter, we are still under great pressure of price hikes,” Wen said, adding, “We should never lower our guard.” (ANI)
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