Consumer prices rose slightly last month from the year previous, due to rising costs of vegetables, seafood and service charges prior to the Lunar New Year holidays, as well as sustained high materials costs, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The consumer price index (CPI), a closely-watched indicator gauging inflation, rose 1.94 percent year-on-year to 101.65 points last month, after climbing 0.50 percent in January.
Seasonally adjusted, the figure was down 0.09 percent from January, DGBAS said in a statement released yesterday.
Core consumer prices, which exclude food and energy costs, rose 1.87 percent from a year earlier last month after sliding 0.3 percent in January, according to the statement.
The DGBAS forecast the CPI to rise 1.7 percent this year, after climbing 1.62 percent in last year.
But the CPI may go even higher if global crude oil prices continue to surge, which will prompt the nation's oil refiners to hike domestic pump prices.
Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油), the nation's largest refiner, may raise oil prices this week, according to a report in a Chinese-language newspaper yesterday, which didn't cite a source for the information.
The CPI is estimated to increase 0.4 percent if oil prices rise by 10 percent, according to the DGBAS.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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