CPI Down 1.2% in August

China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, registered a year-on-year decline of 1.2 percent in August, according to statistics released by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday morning.

The figure marked a slowing in the pace of the decline of the indicator, which saw a year-on-year decline of 1.8 percent in July, the NBS said in a statement posted on its website.

However, the report went on to add that consumer prices had increased by 0.5 percent month-on-month.

Meanwhile, the producer price index (PPI), another measure of inflation at the wholesale level, dropped 7.9 percent from a year earlier.

The statement also contained other major economic indicators that revealed the state of the country's fixed-asset investment and consumption.

According to the report, China's fixed-asset investment has maintained strong growth momentum.

The country's urban fixed-asset investment in the first eight months rose 33% from a year earlier to nearly 11.3 trillion yuan (1.65 trillion US dollars). Of the figure, investment in real estate reached 2.11 trillion yuan (308.9 billion US dollars), 14.7 percent higher than that in the same period last year.

The total retail sales of consumer goods in August grew 15.4 percent from a year earlier to over 1 trillion yuan. The increase was 7.8 percentage points lower than that in the same period last year, but 0.2 percentage points higher than the figure for July this year.

In the first eight months of this year, sales of consumer goods totaled 7.87 trillion yuan (1.15 trillion US dollars).

China's central bank also released the new lending figures for August on Friday.

In August, new yuan-denominated loans rose to 410.4 billion yuan (60.02 billion U.S. dollars) from July's total of 355.9 billion yuan. The figure exceeded market predictions and pushed up total new lending in the first eight months to 8.15 trillion yuan (1.19 trillion US dollars).

Links and Sources
National Bureau of Statistics: Report (Chinese)
Peoples' Bank of China: Report (Chinese)
Sina: image