China's CPI Down 1.8 % in July

By Liu Peng
Published: 2009-08-11

Amid growing concerns that the rapid growth in money supply that took place in the first half of the year could lead to inflation, China's main inflation indicators remained negative in July.

The consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, registered a year-on-year drop of 1.8 percent in July, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a press conference on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the producer price index (PPI), another measure of inflation at the wholesale level, dropped 8.2 percent in July from a year earlier.

This the sixth consecutive month that the the two inflation indicators have simultaneously declined year-on-year since both indicators dropped 1.6 percent and 4.5 percent respectively in February.

The CPI in June recorded a year-on-year decrease of 1.7 percent, and the PPI in June fell 7.8 percent from a year earlier.

At the press conference, the NBS also released other major economic figures involving the country's fixed-asset investment and consumption.

The country's urban fixed-asset investment in the first seven months rose 32.9 percent from a year earlier to 9.59 trillion yuan (1.4 trillion US dollars). Of the figure, investment in real estate reached 1.77 trillion yuan (258.4 billion US dollars). 

The total retail sales of consumer goods in July grew 15.2 percent from a year earlier to 993.7 billion yuan (145 billion US dollars). The increase was 8.1 percentage points lower than that in the same period last year and 0.2 of a percentage point higher than the figure for June this year.

In the first seven months of this year, sales of consumer goods totaled 6,864.8 billion yuan (nearly 1000 billion US dollars).

The NBS also announced that, starting from this month, they would hold regular monthly press conferences on or around the 11th of every month to announce the release of major economic statistics.

Links and Sources
National Bureau of Statistics: Report (English)
National Bureau of Statistics: Report (Chinese)
Sina: Graph