La inflación en China indica mayor debilidad en la economía
Los precios de fábricas cayeron 2.9% y aunque han sido negativos todo el año, la caída se aceleró en Mayo.
Lose éxitos cayeron 0.6% en Mayo con respecto a Abril.
China Inflation Data Point to Weakness
June 9, 2013 12:25 AM
By William Kazer
BEIJING—China showed fresh signs of a less-than-robust economy in May as two measures of inflation revealed surprising weakness.
While the news on the inflation front was good for consumers, it showed underlying weakness in demand in the world's second-largest economy and pointed to slimmer hopes for faster economic growth in the months ahead.
Factory-level prices—which have been negative for more than a year—fell at an even faster pace in May, sliding 2.9% from a year ago after a fall of 2.6% in April, the statistics bureau said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, consumer prices rose a mild 2.1% after climbing 2.4% in April. More troublesome was the news that prices were down 0.6% from the previous month, though this was largely due to a sharp month-on-month fall in fresh vegetable prices amid a boost in supplies.
All of the figures undershot expectations.
"The producer price drop … shows that domestic demand is still relatively weak," said J.P. Morgan economist Zhu Haibin.
"The economy should still be relatively weak in the second quarter. And overall there are not too many reasons to be optimistic on the domestic or external sides," he said.
China's economic growth slowed to 7.7% in the first quarter after a 7.9% rise in the fourth quarter of last year, and economists have been cutting their forecasts for economic growth for the year.
More recent data have also been relatively weak, most recently with Saturday's report that exports in May were up a meager 1% over a year ago, signaling that external demand may not give the economy much of a boost in the months ahead.
"In the corporate sector the overall situation is still bad, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises," said HSBC economist Ma Xiaoping. "Output prices are decreasing, which could reflect deteriorating profit margins for them."
Analysts said the slower growth seems to be still within an acceptable range for China's leaders, however.
While more moderate inflation leaves more room for China's central bank to cut interest rates to help the economy, that doesn't seem likely at this point.
"Theoretically there is room to cut interest rates but it is unlikely to do so," said Mr. Zhu of J.P. Morgan. "The current problems are mainly structural so a cut in rates may not help."
China's President and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping seemed to be saying just that in remarks made during his visit to the U.S. where he met American President Barack Obama. He said the economy's more-measured pace of expansion—such as the first quarter's 7.7% growth rate—was beneficial toward the nation's goal of restructuring its economy, according to a statement on the main government website.
Meanwhile, the central bank said on Sunday that Chinese financial institutions issued 667.4 billion yuan ($107.6 billion) of new yuan loans in May, down from 792.9 billion yuan in April and below economists' expectations. Total social financing, a broader measurement of credit in the economy, came to 1.19 trillion yuan in May, down from 1.75 trillion in April.
The broad M2 money supply also expanded at a slightly slower pace, climbing 15.8% at the end of May compared with a year earlier, against the 16.1% rise at the end of April.
-Liyan Qi and Richard Silk contributed to this article.
Write to William Kazer at
william.kazer@dowjones.com