China’s consumer prices slipped into deflation for the second time this year, according to official data, signaling weakness in domestic demand despite the government’s stepped-up efforts to boost growth.
The consumer-price index fell 0.2% in October from a year earlier after being flat in September, the National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday. A Wall Street Journal poll of economists had tipped a 0.1% decline.
The previous time the world’s second-largest economy experienced deflation was in July, when the CPI fell 0.3%.
“The CPI fell slightly in October due to factors such as good weather, sufficient supply of agricultural products and declining consumer demand after the holidays,” Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician with the statistics bureau, said in a statement.
Food prices fell 4.0% in October, compared with a 3.2% decline in September. Pork prices tumbled 30.1% after declining 22.0% in September.
Nonfood prices rose 0.7%, matching September’s pace.
China’s core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.6% in October after increasing 0.8% for three months.
On a monthly basis, China’s CPI declined 0.1%, compared with September’s 0.2% increase.
Meanwhile, China’s producer-price index for October dropped 2.6% from a year earlier, compared with September’s 2.5% fall. The survey of economists had expected PPI to decline 2.7%.
On a monthly basis, China’s PPI was flat, compared with a 0.4% increase in September.
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