China's Oct CPI up 1.5% and PPI up 13.5%

A customer buys vegetables at a supermarket in Zaozhuang, east China's Shandong Province, Aug. 9, 2021. (Photo by Sun Zhongzhe/Xinhua)

China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, grew by 1.5 percent year-on-year last month, up from 0.7 percent in September and marking a 13-month high, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.

The CPI growth went up as vegetable prices increased due to rainy weather, higher costs and COVID-19 cases in some areas. Meanwhile, the price rise in industrial consumer goods accelerated amid rising oil and diesel prices, the NBS said.

On a month-on-month basis, the CPI grew by 0.7 percent in October, compared with 0 percent in the previous month.

The growth in core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices and is deemed a better gauge of the supply-demand relationship in the economy, came in at 1.3 percent in October, versus 1.2 percent in September.

Dong Lijuan, a senior NBS statistician, said consumer prices rose last month due to special weather, rising costs and tight supply of some goods, while industrial goods prices also increased at a faster speed amid rising international oil prices and tight domestic supply of energies and raw materials.

China's producer price index, which gauges factory gate prices, rose by 13.5 percent year-on-year last month, up from 10.7 percent in September and marking the highest level since the NBS started to release the numbers in 1996.

Specifically, prices of the coal processing industry rose by 103.7 percent year-on-year last month amid tight supply. Seven sectors including oil and gas extraction, ferrous and nonferrous metal smelting and chemicals manufacturing saw prices growing between 12 percent and 59.7 percent on a yearly basis.

The PPI rose by 2.5 percent on a monthly basis in October, up from 1.2 percent in September.