China's CPI up 0.5% in January

BEIJING - China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, was up 0.5 percent year-on-year in January, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Sunday.

The figure was up from the 0.1-percent increase registered last month, largely due to the influence of the Spring Festival holiday, said NBS statistician Dong Lijuan.

The core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 0.6 percent from a year ago in January, up from the 0.4-percent increase in December 2024.

On a monthly basis, the CPI expanded 0.7 percent in January, the data showed.

The NBS data also showed the country's producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, went down 2.3 percent year-on-year in January, flat with that in December last year.

On a month-on-month basis, the PPI dropped 0.2 percent in January.