China's inflation picks up in April in virus flare-up

Beijing, China – China's consumer inflation rose at its quickest pace in nearly half a year, official data showed Wednesday, reflecting the growing costs of the country's zero-Covid curbs and high commodity prices.

The damage from Beijing's strict zero-COVID strategy has been increasingly reflected in economic data, as lockdowns in key cities such as Shanghai snarled supply chains and pushed up transportation prices.

April's consumer price index (CPI), a key gauge of retail inflation, rose more than expected at 2.1 per cent on-year, picking up from levels seen the month before, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

This was due to "factors like the domestic epidemic and continued rise in international commodity prices," the bureau's senior statistician Dong Lijuan said in a statement.

Since April, China's biggest city Shanghai had been almost entirely sealed off.

Most of its 25mn residents have been confined to their homes, while goods piled up at its port as authorities rush to stamp out the worst COVID resurgence since the early days of the pandemic.

Dong said that "due to the rise in logistics costs during the pandemic and increase in demand for stockpiling," prices of potatoes, eggs and fresh fruits ticked up.

The latest figures also showed that after four consecutive months of contraction, food prices overall rose for the first time on-year in April.

Meanwhile, the producer price index (PPI) – which gauges the cost of goods at the factory gate – came in at 8.0 per cent, higher than expected but down slightly from in March.