China’s consumer inflation last month slowed to the weakest pace in two years, while producer prices fell further into deflation, fueling debate about whether more policy stimulus is needed.
The consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.1 percent from a year earlier, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said yesterday, reflecting muted domestic demand as well as base effects from April last year’s Shanghai lockdown.
Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, was unchanged at 0.7 percent.
Photo: Bloomberg
Producer prices fell 3.6 percent last month as commodity costs softened. The figure was more than March’s drop and deeper than economists had expected.
“There is still a big gap between demand and its pre-pandemic trend,” Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd senior China strategist Xing Zhaopeng (邢兆鵬) said.
“We do not think domestic demand can improve significantly in the near-term,” Xing added, estimating that it would take three to five years to rebound.
China’s economic growth accelerated to a one-year high in the first quarter, but recent data on contracting manufacturing activity and weakening trade have flashed warning signs that the recovery might be waning.
That has created speculation about whether the central bank would ease policy — and they have some scope to do so, given the US Federal Reserve signaled a potential pause in interest rate hikes and the latest data showed US inflation cooled somewhat last month.
Chinese banks might also have room to lower lending rates going forward after some of them cut their deposit rates recently.
A high base of comparison with April last year weighed on last month’s data, NBS analyst Dong Lijuan (董莉娟) said in a statement.
Consumer prices had increased rapidly then as COVID-19 lockdowns in major cities — including Shanghai — battered supply chains and pushed people to stockpile food.
Slower rises in food and energy costs pushed inflation lower. Food prices rose 0.4 percent last month from a year earlier, compared with a 2.4 percent increase in March, with pressures on pork prices waning.
Producer-price deflation is also being driven by falling costs for commodities like iron ore and crude oil.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
RSS