China's producer prices fall for 45th month

BEIJING - China's producer prices fell for the 45th straight month but at a narrower rate against market expectation, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Wednesday.

The producer price index (PPI), a measure of costs for goods at the factory gate, dropped 5.9 percent year on year, and the decline was slightly less than the 6-percent market forecast and unchanged from the rate seen in the last three months.

Month on month, PPI in November edged down 0.5 percent mainly due to price drop in the non-ferrous metal smelting and oil processing industry. The index fell 5.2 percent from a year ago in the Jan-Nov period.

Output prices of production materials fell 7.6 percent in November, contributing 5.8 percentage points of the PPI drop, while those of consumer goods edged down 0.4 percent during the period.

The data came along with the release of the consumer price inflation index, which rose 1.5 percent in November, beating market forecast of 1.4 percent and the 1.3-percent rise in October.

Deflation pressure remains in China despite the better-than-expected PPI and CPI data, said HSBC analyst Qu Hongbin, projecting further monetary easing policies.