BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- China’s consumer price index (CPI) is widely expected to have grown 2 percent in 2016 as the monthly CPI growth curve showing a U-shape in the year, says a recent report of the Economic Information Daily.
As pork price is entering an upward trend and the producer price index (PPI) will pass down the inflationary pressure, prices in China may keep rising quarter by quarter in 2017, says the report.
Experts say if the inflation expectation strengthens, there is a possibility for China to tighten monetary policy.
An economic analysis team of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) predicts that CPI growth rates in the four quarter of 2017 may reach 2.0 percent, 2.2 percent, 2.3 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively. The CPI may rise mildly by 2.2 percent for the whole year of 2017, 0.2 percentage point higher than in 2016.
For the PPI, the CASS team forecast it will rise at 0.9 percent, 1.5 percent, 1.9 percent and 2.2 percent in the four quarters in 2017, and the PPI would turn positive and rise 1.6 percentage points in 2017, 3.7 percentage points more than in 2016.
Lian Ping, chief economist at the Bank of Communications, believes that pork prices will end the declining trend in the first quarter of 2017 and enter an upward circle in the next year. The cold weather in the winter and the upcoming peak consumption season towards the end of the year would push up prices of vegetables, fruits, meats and aquatic products.
However, some experts say the inflationary pressure is not obvious in 2017. Zhu Baoliang from the Economic Forecast Department of the National Information Center, says the fact that the overall supply is larger than demand has not been changed and there is not enough base for the price level to increase sharply. In terms of the PPI, the driving force for global commodities to further rebound is weakening and over production capacity in China, so the prices are unlikely to continue rise. Enditem
(Edited by Yang Qi, kateqiyang@xinhua.org)
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