China's consumerprice index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.9% year on year in 2019,within government target of 3%, official data showed on January 9.
The growth pickedup from 2.8% in the first 11 months, and was above the 2.1-percent annualincrease in 2018, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
In December, theCPI climbed 4.5% year on year, unchanged from that in November.
The hike wasmainly driven by food prices, which soared 17.4% year on year last month,contributing 3.43 percentage points to the increase in December.
As governmentmeasures at national and local levels to restore hog production started to takeeffect, the soaring trend of pork prices affected by the African swine feverand cyclical factors has softened in the past month.
Pork pricessurged 97% year on year in December, slowing from the 110.2-percent growth seenin November. Prices of other kinds of protein including beef, mutton andpoultry saw slower growth last month.
Non-food pricesgained 1.3% last month, faster than the 1-percent growth in November, thebureau said.
The core CPI,which excludes food and energy prices, ticked up 1.4% year on year in December,flat with that in November.
The quickenedgrowth in industrial production and sales and the moderate drop in thefactory-gate prices of industrial products can be attributed to the rebound inNovember, according to Zhu.
In the first 11months, the profits of China's major industrial firms dropped 2.1% to 5.61trillion yuan (802.8 billion U.S. dollars), narrowing 0.8 percentage pointsfrom that in the first 10 months.
Specifically,profits of state-owned industrial firms dropped 11.2% from one year earlier to1.6 trillion yuan, while those of private ones gained 6.5% year on year to 1.59trillion yuan in the first 11 months.
During theperiod, profits of the mining industry climbed 1% to 517.4 billion yuan, whilemanufacturing industry profits fell 4.1% to 4.63 trillion yuan.
Profits in 28 ofthe 41 industrial sectors surveyed rose compared with one year earlier, while13 sectors saw their profits fall in the first 11 months, according to the NBS. （摘自《China Fertilizer Market Weekly》2020年第二周）
