Special Report: Global Financial Crisis
BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhua) -- China's consumer price index (CPI), a major gauge of inflation, fell 1.2 percent year on year in March, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Thursday.
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Graphics shows the consumer price index went down by 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to Li Xiaochao, spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics of China, on April 16, 2009. (Xinhua/Zhang Liyun)
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This compared with a decline of 1.6 percent in
February, the first monthly fall since December 2002.
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People queue at a supermarket in
Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province April 16, 2009. China's consumer
price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, fell 1.2 percent year on
year in March, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Thursday.
(Xinhua/Li Ziheng)
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The March CPI decline mainly reflected lower
commodity prices and weak demand, Peng Wensheng, analyst with Barclays Capital
Research, said in an e-mail statement to Xinhua.
The CPI declined 0.6 percent in the first quarter.
Retail commodity prices fell 0.8 percent in the first
quarter, although food prices, which account for about one-third of the CPI,
edged up 0.5 percent.
The government has set a full-year inflation target
of 4 percent.
The producer price index, a major measure of
inflation at the wholesale level, fell 4.6 percent in the first quarter, the
bureau said.
The declines in the indices didn't indicate that
there was a deflation problem in China, and it wouldn't be necessary to cut
interest rates further in the short term, said Wang Xiaoguang, an economist with
the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic
planner.
In an effort to boost economic growth, the People's
Bank of China, the central bank, has cut interest rates five times and reduced
banks' required reserve ratio four times since September.
At the end of last month, the money supply had risen
25.5 percent from a year earlier to 53.06 trillion yuan (7.77 trillion U.S.
dollars), while new loans hit a record of 4.58 trillion yuan in the first
quarter.
Retail sales expanded 15 percent to 2.94 trillion
yuan in the first quarter, the NBS said.
Zhang Liqun, researcher with the Development Research
Center of the State Council, or Cabinet, said the growth in retail sales was
"not bad" and showed that the government's policies to boost domestic demand
were starting to take effect.
Consumption would show stable, relatively fast
growth, boosted by rising incomes, said NBS spokesman Li Xiaochao.
Urban consumer goods sales rose 14.1 percent to 1.98
trillion yuan, while sales in rural areas increased 17 percent to 956.4 billion
yuan.
BEIJING, April 10 (Xinhua) -- China's exports
fell for the fifth month in a row to 90.29 billion U.S. dollars in March, down
17.1 percent from a year earlier, the General Administration of Customs said
Friday.
In February, exports plummeted 25.7 percent year on year,
the worst decline in more than a decade. Full story
BEIJING, April 11 (Xinhua) -- China's foreign
exchange reserves rose 16 percent year-on-year to 1.9537 trillion U.S. dollars
by the end of March, said the People's Bank of China on Saturday.
It represents an increase of 7.7 billion dollars for the first quarter, but
the increase was 146.2 billion dollars lower than the same period of last
year. Full story
BEIJING, April 14 -- Home prices declined in
March compared to a year earlier in 70 Chinese cities as they extended losses
for a fourth consecutive month, the country's top economic planner said on
Monday.
Prices in 70 medium and large cities fell 1.3 percent year
on year last month, the National Development and Reform Commission said on its
website. Prices dropped 1.2 percent in February, 0.9 percent in January and 0.4
percent in December. Full story
BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry
of Finance (MOF) said Monday that fiscal revenue fell 0.3 percent from a year
earlier to 440.22 billion yuan (64.43 billion U.S. dollars) in March.
First-quarter fiscal revenue fell 8.3 percent to 1.46
trillion yuan, the ministry said on its website, while tax revenue shrank 10.3
percent to 1.3 trillion yuan. Full story
BEIJING, March 9 (Xinhua) -- China's business
climate index, a main gauge of macro-economic outlook, continued to fall in the
first quarter, but the decline was much smaller than that for the previous
quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Thursday.
The quarterly business climate index slipped from 107 at
the end of last year to 105.6 in the first quarter this year, the NBS said. It
was the third drop in a row as the deepening global financial crisis continues
to hit the Chinese economy. Full story
BEIJING, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Foreign
investment activities dampened by the world financial crisis seemed to show
signs of warming up in China as the decline of foreign direct investment (FDI)
continued to slow in March.
Statistics released by the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on
Wednesday showed the FDI dropped for the sixth consecutive month in March to 8.4
billion U.S. dollars, down 9.5 percent from a year earlier. Full story
BEIJING, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Power consumption
in China continued to decline in March but the downward pace was slower,
reflecting signs of a recovering economy, industry figures showed Tuesday.
China's power use fell 2.01 percent year on year in March,
compared with a dip of 5.2 percent in the January-February period, said the
China Electricity Council (CEC) in a statement on its Website. Full story
TIANJIN, April 14 (Xinhua) -- China's steel
industry overestimated the country's demand for iron ore and as a result
imported a record high amount of the material in March.
A surge of domestic steel output and price increases in
the beginning of 2009 raised market expectations. Many domestic steel mills and
traders increased orders for iron ore in February and March as they anticipated
demand would continue growing, said Liang Shuhe, deputy-director with the
Foreign Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), at an industry
conference in the port city of Tianjin Monday. Full story
BEIJING, April 9 (Xinhua) -- Sales of
domestically produced motor vehicles in China set a new record of 1.11 million
units in March, up 5 percent from a year earlier, the China Association of
Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said Thursday.
This was the third consecutive month that China's auto sales exceeded the
United States, the world's largest auto market. Full story
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China's eonomic figures for first 2 month |
Economic data in Feb.
Full story
Economic data in Jan.
China's CPI up 1%
in January: BEIJING, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- China's consumer price
index (CPI), a major gauge of inflation, rose by 1 percent in January over the
same month last year, the National Bureau of Statistics announced Tuesday.
China's PPI down 3.3% in January:
In January, the producer price index (PPI), another measure of
inflation at the wholesale level, dropped 3.3 percent. The decline was 2.2
percentage points above the December level. Full story
