Guangzhou (JLC), February 10, 2023--China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.1% year on year in January 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Friday.
The growth accelerated from a 1.8% increase in December 2022.
The CPI uptick in January can be partly attributed to the Spring Festival holiday boom and the optimized epidemic response, according to Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician with the NBS.
On a month-on-month basis, the CPI edged up 0.8%. Food prices rose 2.8% in January.
Specifically, the price of pork, a staple meat in China, slumped 10.8% in January from the previous month, as the supply of pork continues to increase, Dong said.
However, pork prices still climbed 11.8% year on year, narrowing by 10.4 percentage points from the previous month.
Non-food prices rose 1.2% from a year earlier. The price growth of gasoline, diesel, and liquified petroleum gas went up by 5.5%, 5.9%, and 4.9% year on year, respectively.
On a month-on-month basis, the surge in demand for travel and entertainment after the adjustment of the country's COVID-19 response buoyed the prices of plane tickets, movie and show tickets and tours by 20.3%, 10.7% and 9.3%, respectively, according to Dong.
Friday's data also showed that China's producer price index, which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, slid 0.8% year on year in January.
