BackConsumer prices rise to a record 6.9% in China
Consumer prices rise to a record 6.9% in China
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Beijing: China’s inflation at 6.9% touched an 11-year high in November, signalling that the goverment’s efforts to tame it were not enough.
Food and oil prices have driven the Consumer Price Index up to the biggest monthly rise of 6.9% in November this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.
The CPI reported today is up from 6.5% rise registered in October which had equaled the 11-year monthly high of August figure after easing a little in September.
Food prices ballooned 18.2% in November, compared with 17.6% in October.
Yao Jingyuan, chief economist with NBS, said price hikes for foodstuffs, which have a weight of 33% in China’s CPI, and oil price rises were major “driving forces" behind the rise.
The accumulative CPI increase reached 4.6% in the first 11 months, said the bureau, according to official Xinhua news agency.
Wrestling with the sensitive issue of price in this Communist nation, government has taken a slew of measures to tame it and prevent overheating of the economy which is growing at a scorching pace with double-digit figure.
After a key economic meeting last week, China had announced that it would shift the monetary policy from “prudent" to “tight" next year to prevent the economy from overheating and vowed to take “forceful measures" to curb the price rise.
China has raised the reserve requirement ratio for commercial banks this year to check excessive credit growth. The interest rates have also been raised five times this year to cool the economy.
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