China's CPI will be stable in 2013: NBS chief

China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, will be stable in 2013 as long as the regulations and controls are appropriate, Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, told a news briefing on Friday.

As economic growth accelerated for the first time in two years, CPI rose 2.5 percent year-on-year in December, compared with the 2.0 percent increase in November and the whole year's slowest pace of 1.7 percent in October. The whole year of 2012 saw CPI increase 2.6 percent year-on-year, according to the bureau. Meanwhile, the producer price index or PPI, a major measure of factory gate inflation, fell 1.9 percent in December from a year earlier after touching the bottom in September with a fall of 3.6 percent.

Ma said that the seasonal price surge of vegetables was primarily responsible for the CPI rebound in December. In addition, imported inflation following the quantitative easing in major economies will probably affect China's CPI in 2013 while costs of labor, land, resources and environment will maintain a climbing momentum in the future.

But Ma added that the 589.57 million ton grain harvest in 2012, an increase of 3.2 percent from a year earlier, established a "solid foundation" for stabilizing the CPI in 2013 as food prices accounted for a great share in the recent CPI increase. Moreover, industrial overcapacity will constrain a price surge in manufactured goods. A proactive fiscal policy and continuing the prudent monetary policy in 2013 will also help stabilize prices.