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China's CPI falls 0.5% in October, PPI down 5.8%

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-11-11 10:18

China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, dipped 0.5 percent year-on-year in October, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Wednesday.

The rate of decline was 0.3 percentage points lower than that in Septemper.

The producer price index (PPI), a major measure of inflation at the wholesale level, dropped 5.8 percent in October from a year earlier, according to the NBS.

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The rate of decline was 1.2 percentage points lower than that in September.

The CPI in urban and rural areas fell 0.7 percent and 0.1 percent respectively year-on-year last month, Sheng Laiyun, a spokesman of the NBS told reporters Wednesday.

Food prices nationwide went up by 1.6 percent year-on-year in October, while non-food prices dropped 1.6 percent.

These figures were in line with analysts' forecasts, Lian Ping, chief economist of the Bank of Communications, China's fifth largest lender, told Xinhua Wednesday.

"The CPI month-on-month decrease rate continues to narrow, and we predict a CPI growth either in November or December in China," Lian said.