Our reporter Meng Ke
The National Bureau of Statistics will release April consumer price index (CPI) data and industrial producer price index (PPI) data in the near future. Many institutions predict that due to the rising prices of vegetables, pork and other foods, the CPI in April will rise slightly year-on-year, or about 2%. Due to the continuous efforts of domestic measures to ensure supply and stabilize prices, it is expected that the PPI will continue to decline year-on-year in April, with an increase of around 8.0%.
Demand expands
Support the upward trend of CPI
“It is expected that the CPI in April will increase by 0.3% month-on-month and 2.1% year-on-year.” Li Chao, chief economist of Zheshang Securities, said that the prices of fruits, vegetables and eggs have risen sharply due to the expansion of demand, which has formed a strong support for the upward trend of CPI. In April, due to various factors, transportation and logistics in some areas were blocked, and food supply was tight. Among them, the average wholesale prices of 28 kinds of key monitored vegetables and eggs have increased by more than 17% year-on-year, and the average price of 7 kinds of key monitored fruits has also increased by more than 12% year-on-year.
“It is expected that the CPI in April will further increase to around 2.0% year-on-year.” Mingming, chief economist of CITIC Securities, told the “Securities Daily” reporter that the price of food items in the CPI in April rose month-on-month, especially the price of pork stopped in April. Despite the downward trend, fresh fruit prices have also risen seasonally; in terms of non-food products, due to multiple factors, the prices of some consumer goods may rebound. In general, the CPI is expected to rise slightly month-on-month, superimposed on the tail-raising factor, and the CPI in April will rise year-on-year.
Zhou Maohua, a macro researcher at the Financial Market Department of China Everbright Bank, said in an interview with a reporter from Securities Daily that the CPI in April may have risen slightly year-on-year. Affected by the spread of the epidemic and the rise in production costs such as energy, the prices of vegetables, pork and other foods have risen. However, considering that domestic consumption is in the recovery stage and the supply of domestic agricultural products is abundant, the domestic supply and price stabilization measures will help stabilize the market supply and production cost pressure, and prices can remain moderate and controllable.
Zheng Houcheng, director of the Yingda Securities Research Institute, said that on April 15, the central bank pointed out that it “closely pays attention to the changes in price trends and maintains the overall stability of prices.” In addition, considering that the base in the same period in 2021 will increase by 0.4 percentage points, it is expected that the core CPI in April will have a high probability of being higher than the same period last year. It fluctuated slightly on the basis of March.
three factors
Unfavorable April PPI year-on-year
In terms of PPI, Zheng Houcheng said that the base effect, the tail-raising factor and the new price increase factor are all unfavorable to the PPI in April. 7″ era.
“The PPI in April will drop slightly to around 7.8% year-on-year.” Mingming expects.
Wu Chaoming, vice president of the Financial Information Research Institute, predicts that the PPI in April will increase by about 8.0% year-on-year. “In April, the PPI tail-raising factor dropped by about 1.0 percentage points from the previous month. At the same time, the development of infrastructure and the expected restoration of real estate will form a certain support for domestic priced commodities, but the policy of ensuring supply and stabilizing prices continued to advance, and the prices of industrial products such as coal rose month-on-month. The amplitude is relatively controllable.” Wu Chaoming said.
Zhou Maohua said that the PPI in April may continue to fall year-on-year. On the one hand, energy and commodity price trends remained high and fluctuated; on the other hand, domestic raw materials and other commodities continued to maintain supply and price stabilization measures.
In Mingming’s view, last year’s CPI and PPI gradually diverged year-on-year, but this year they turned to convergence. In April, the year-on-year scissors difference between CPI and PPI may further converge. The year-on-year upward trend of CPI may continue for a period of time, and the year-on-year downward trend of PPI will also continue throughout the year, and there will be no risk of high inflation as a whole. Stabilizing prices has become an important goal at the current stage, of which grain production, energy supply, and supply chain bottlenecks are the most important policy concerns. For monetary policy, the pressure to stabilize prices has increased, and the operation of aggregate easing may require stronger triggers and appropriate windows. Structural monetary policy tools will further exert force.
(Editor: Wen Jing)