China’s factory gate prices rose in annual terms in January for the first time in a year, as months of strong manufacturing growth in the world’s second-largest economy pushed raw material costs higher.
The producer price index (PPI) rose 0.3% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement, the fastest pace of increase since May 2019.
China’s return to factory-gate inflation was driven by increases in upstream raw materials, said Betty Wang, an analyst at ANZ. Over the next months PPI “may extend the uptrend and rise positively,” she said.