China's CPI Up 2.8% in April

China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.8 percent in April from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday morning.

The figure, 0.4 percentage points higher than March's, represents the six consecutive month of positive growth for the indicator, following nine months of negative growth.

A close look at the April figure shows that food prices rose 5.9 percent from a year earlier, while non-food prices were up 1.3 percent year-on-year.

The producer price index (PPI), another measure of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 6.8 percent from a year earlier, the NBS announced in the statement.

The figure quickened from 5.9 percent in February, 4.3 percent growth in January this year and 1.7 percent growth last December, the month in which the indicator finally emerged from 12 months of negative growth.

The statistics bureau also released statistics on investment and consumption.

Urban fixed-assets investment in the first four months of 2010 registered a year-on-year increase of 26.1 percent to reach 4.67 trillion yuan (684 billion US dollars). Of that figure, investment in real estate reached 993.2 billion yuan (145.4 billion US dollars), up 36.2 percent from a year earlier.

According to another statement concerning real estate operation released by the NBS on the same day, commercial floor space sold in the first four month reached 234 million square meters, 32.8 percent higher from a year earlier but 0.3 percentage points lower than the first quarter's figure.

In April, 72.49 million square meters of commercial residential property was sold, 1.8 million square meters less than that sold in March. Despite the drop in floor space sold, as measured in terms of value, the amount of money spent on commercial residential property was up 55.3 billion yuan from the March figure to a total of 384.6 billion yuan.

According to the statement, housing prices across 70 large and medium-sized cities rose by an average of 12.8 percent from a year earlier in April. The growth accelerated from the 11.7 percent increase in March.

During the same period, retail sales of consumer goods nationwide reached 4.78 trillion yuan (700.1 billion US dollars), up 18.1 percent from a year earlier.

The People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, also released February's lending figures on the same day.

Yuan-denominated new loans issued in April totalled 774 billion yuan, while yuan-denominated deposits increased by 1.18 trillion yuan over the same period.

Links and Sources
National Bureau of Statistics: 4月份国民经济主要指标数据 (Chinese)
National Bureau of Statistics: 1-4月全国房地产市场运行情况 (Chinese)
People's Bank of China: 2010年4月金融统计数据报告 (Chinese)
Sohu Finance: Graph

This article was edited by Paul Pennay