China’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose by 0.9 per cent year-on-year in February.
This was flat from the growth seen in the same period in 2021, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday.
Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician with the NBS, said that on a monthly basis, the CPI gained 0.6 per cent due to rising food demand during the Spring Festival, which fell in February this year, along with the fluctuations in global energy prices.
According to the data, food prices went up 1.4 per cent from the previous month, driving up the monthly consumer inflation by 0.26 percentage point.
Prices for industrial consumption products rose to 0.8 per cent from January, fueled by high global energy costs, the prices of gasoline, diesel and liquified petroleum gas went up by 6.2 per cent, 6.7 per cent and 1.3 per cent, respectively.
Wednesday’s data also showed that China’s Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, rose by 8.8 per cent year-on-year in February.
Month-on-month, the PPI inched up to 0.5 per cent.