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CPI drops to 6.3%, lowest since Sept

By Wang Xu (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-13 07:42

The consumer price index (CPI) fell to a 10-month low of 6.3 percent in July, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Tuesday.

Residents in Yichang, central Hubei province buy fruit at a supermarket August 12, 2008. The consumer price index (CPI) fell to a 10-month low of 6.3% in July, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Tuesday.

The third consecutive monthly drop of the CPI, the barometer of inflation, will give the government more leeway to maintain steady growth and adjust energy prices, analysts said.

They attributed the fall to moderating food price inflation, thanks to a good grain harvest in summer and the government's steps to boost agricultural production.

Food prices, which account for one-third of the CPI basket, rose 14.4 percent in July, compared with 17.3 percent in June. Among the food products whose prices rose last month were cooking oil (30.8 percent), fish (18.3 percent) and meat (16 percent).

Non-food products' inflation, however, rose in July to 2.1 percent year-on-year against 1.9 percent in June. That was mainly because of the government's move to raise gasoline and diesel prices and electricity charges in late June and July.

The fall in CPI "should give the government greater room to ease its price control measures and focus more on growth than inflation", Lehman Brothers' economist Sun Mingchun said.

The government had said last month that it would focus on curbing inflation while trying to maintain a stable and fast economic growth.

This shows the country's policymakers are more worried over a possible slowdown of the economy now because the weakening global demand has already dealt a blow to its exports sector.

That's why, analysts said, the government raised tax rebates for textile exporters and loan quotas for domestic firms earlier this month after the GDP growth slowed down to 10.5 percent in the first half.

Citigroup's economist Ken Peng said a falling CPI could mean another increase in fuel prices after the Olympic Games because the government control of fuel prices and electricity tariff was meant to curb inflation.

The factory gate inflation, however, has continued to soar, with producer price index (PPI) jumping to a 12-year high of 10 percent in July.

Coal prices have more than doubled in the past year, and existing electricity charges are 30 percent lower than what they should be, Standard Chartered economist Stephen Green said.

The CPI would remain under pressure in the second half of the year, he said, because energy tariff could be adjusted closer to the market levels. That could make the annual inflation rate hover around 6.5 percent.

Sun Mingchun, however, said the CPI would fall below 6 percent in August and continue its drop during the rest of the four months of the year because of the government measures to boost agricultural production.

"Falling inflation shows the government's macro-tightening measures have been effective, which will reduce investor fears over the possibility of policy missteps and increase the chances of a shift to targeted pro-growth policies," Jing Ulrich, JPMorgan Chase's chairwoman for China equities, has said.

Zhang Xiaojing, an expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, attributed the CPI decline to falling food prices and shrinking demand abroad.

Despite the fall, however, it would be difficult to keep the annual CPI growth below the government's target of 4.8 percent, he said.

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