China's consumer prices fell 1.4 per cent in the year to May, marking the fourth consecutive month of deflation, the National Bureau of Statistics saidtoday.
Economists had expected a 1.3 per cent decline in the consumer price index (CPI) following a 1.5 per cent fall in the year to April.
In the first five months, prices were down 0.9 percent from the same period last year, the statistics office said.
In May alone, consumer prices fell 0.3 per cent, following a 0.2 per cent drop in April, it said. This month-on-month figure is not seasonally adjusted.
Food prices, which make up a third of the consumer basket, fell 0.6 per cent in May from a year earlier. Non-food prices were down 1.7 per cent.
China's producer prices fell 7.2 per cent in the year to May, the rate of decline accelerating from a 6.6 per cent drop in the 12 months to April, the agency said.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected the producer price index to fall 6.8 per cent. In the first five months of this year, producer prices were down 5.5 per cent, the statistics office said.
Economists are largely relaxed about the fall in prices, seeing it as a statistical correction of the surge in food and some industrial commodity prices in 2008 rather than a sign of economic contraction.
Reuters