China's consumer prices drop for second time in 2023

China's consumer prices dropped for the second time this year while factory-gate prices declined at a faster pace, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Thursday.

The country's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, dipped by 0.2 percent year-on-year in October, the NBS said, after a flat reading in September, marking the second negative growth so far this year following a 0.3 percent drop in July.

Dong Lijuan, an NBS statistician, attributed the decline to an ample supply of food thanks to good weather and falling consumer demand after the combined Mid-Autumn and National Day holiday.

Food prices decreased 4 percent year-on-year, compared with a 3.2 percent drop in September. The decline in pork prices, in particular, widened from 22 percent in September to 30.1 percent in October. Non-food prices increased by 0.7 percent year-on-year in October, the same as September.

On a month-on-month basis, the CPI fell by 0.1 percent, versus a 0.2 percent increase in September.

The growth in core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices and is deemed a better gauge of the supply-demand relationship in the economy, came in at 0.6 percent year-on-year in October, down from 0.8 percent a month earlier.

Meanwhile, China's producer price index, which gauges factory-gate prices, dropped by 2.6 percent from a year ago in October, following a 2.5 percent drop in September, the NBS said.

Dong said the country's industrial activity continued to expand in October, but international prices of crude oil and nonferrous metal fluctuated while the comparison base rose, leading to a wider PPI decline.

On a month-on-month basis, the PPI registered a flat reading, versus a 0.4 percent rise in September, according to the NBS.