(Bloomberg) -- China’s factory inflation held up in July even as commodity prices eased, and consumer prices gained slightly more than expected.
The producer price index rose 4.6 percent from a year earlier, compared with a projected 4.5 percent increase in a Bloomberg survey of economists and a 4.7 percent gain in June. The consumer price index climbed 2.1 percent, the statistics bureau said Thursday, versus the forecast 2 percent rise.
Policy makers’ vows to boost infrastructure investment amid a slowing economy may underpin domestic demand and counter the external risks posed by the tariff wars. Factory-gate prices so far this year have been defying expectations that they’ll ease to about half the pace of 2017.
"Rising prices of energy and other commodities are broadly positive, helping to boost industrial profits and ease deflation and debt concerns," Katrina Ell, an economist at Moody’s Analytics in Sydney, wrote in a recent note.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Xiaoqing Pi in Beijing at xpi1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey Black at jblack25@bloomberg.net, James Mayger
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
