China confident to meet consumer inflation target for 2021

BEIJING, July 15 (Xinhua) -- China's inflationary pressure is mild and the country can meet its consumer inflation target of around 3 percent for the year, an official with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Thursday.

China reaped a bumper summer harvest in 2021 and grain prices are expected to be stable this year, said NBS spokesperson Liu Aihua.

Prices of pork, the staple meat in China, are expected to remain stable as hog production continues to recover and the country's purchase and storage policies have been supportive, she added.

In the industrial sector, commodities in the international market have seen rising prices and this will raise prices of some industrial consumer goods, the spokesperson said.

However, in the long run, China's supply and industrial production capacities will be strong with a relatively complete industrial system, so the prices of industrial consumer goods will not see sustained price rises, Liu noted.

In the service sector, China's service prices went up 0.3 percent year on year in the first six months, at a low level due to the pandemic, she said.

China has set its consumer inflation target at around 3 percent for the year 2021, according to this year's government work report.

The country's consumer price index (CPI), one of the main gauges of inflation, rose 1.1 percent year on year in June, lower than the 1.3 percent year-on-year growth recorded in May. The average CPI in the first half of the year increased 0.5 percent from the same period last year.