NBS: China's Producer Price Index up 6.9% in September

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Commodity prices in China continued to grow in September amid a bullish outlook for the performance of the world’s second-largest economy as a whole, according to a report released by China's National Bureau of Statistics on Monday.

The report said the Producer Price Index (PPI), which reflects price changes of commodities, had increased by 6.9 percent year-on-year.

Medal refinement has seen the strongest price gain of more than 20 percent among all materials.

The price jump suggested that demands were picking up in the market, signaling that manufacturing could have been reinvigorated.

The increase could be viewed as a welcome sign for continuing economic recovery. Over the past week, senior Chinese officials have spoken up for a robust GDP growth rate that, if realized, will surely meet the country’s targeted national output rise of 6.8 percent.

“China’s GDP growth for the second half of 2017 is likely to return to 7 percent,” predicted Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, the central bank of the world’s second-largest economy, on Sunday.

Industrial electricity consumption, also a yardstick for a country’s economic performance, has pointed to a rally in economic fundamentals.

The consumption for material production was up by 3.0 percent nationwide in September compared to last year, according to data issued by China’s National Energy Administration on October 13, while the rate over the first nine months was 7.8 percent.

The latest official data showed the national growth rate for the first half of 2017 was 6.9 percent.

Materials for consumer goods had seen a milder price rise in September relative to the industrial production, up by 0.1 percent in September in comparison to August, the NBS’s data shows.

The stable price movement translated into a slowing increase in the country’s inflation rate, as shown by the NBS’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) reading, measurement of inflation rate based on prices of a basket of consumer goods, which had risen by 1.6 percent year-on-year.

In the meantime, China has continued deleveraging its economy with slower monetary expansion, another factor that influences inflation.

“The increase rate of China’s broad money supply has slowed down to 9 percent,” Zhou said.