China’s consumer inflation stayed unchanged in May, while factory-gate prices rose at a slower pace as COVID-19 lockdowns jammed up logistics networks and weakened demand.
The country’s consumer price index rose 2.1% from a year earlier in May, the same pace reported for April, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday.
The result was lower than the 2.2% median forecast in a poll of economists by The Wall Street Journal.
Food prices increased 2.3% in May from a year earlier, up from April’s 1.9% growth. Nonfood prices rose 2.1%, down slightly from the 2.2% pace in April.
Compared with April, CPI fell 0.2% in May due to falling food prices and weaker offline consumption, said Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician with the statistics bureau.
China’s stringent lockdown measures damped offline consumption, while online spending increased in May, official data showed.
The producer price index rose 6.4% from a year earlier in May, easing from 8.0% growth in April, but slightly higher than the 6.3% increase expected by the surveyed economists, official data showed.
On a monthly basis, PPI increased 0.1% in May from April.