2011-04-21 14:41

BEIJING - China's consumer prices may stay high for the rest of the year under rising inflation pressure, the country's price officials have warned.

Zhou Wangjun, deputy director of the pricing department of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's top economic planer, said China's inflation rate may remain high for the second quarter of 2011, according to an article in Thursday's Shanghai Securities Journal.

Zhou said the high inflation is a result of excessive liquidity in the global market and rising international commodity prices.

China's consumer price index (CPI), a major gauge of inflation, jumped 5.4 percent in March, the sharpest such increase in nearly three years.

The article also cited Wang Wenbo, deputy director of the Department of Comprehensive Statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, who said that China is still facing huge inflation pressure.

"Inflation is not a short-term issue," Wang said.

The rise in resource costs will not be reversed in the near future, which will cause prices to continue to increase, Wang said, adding that environmental costs are also increasing.

A blue book published Wednesday by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a major Chinese think tank, suggested that the government should take strong measures to tame inflation. Otherwise, the full-year CPI for 2011 will likely exceed the government's target of 4 percent, the book said.