China News Service, Beijing, April 10 (Reporter Wang Enbo) China's National Bureau of Statistics announced on the 10th that China's industrial producer price index (PPI) in March increased by 0.5% year-on-year from a decrease of 0.9% in the previous month, which was the first increase after 41 consecutive months of decline.
Dong Lijuan, chief statistician of the Urban Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that in March, international imported factors affected the year-on-year price increases or decreases in China's related industries. For example, prices in the non-ferrous metal mining and processing industry increased by 36.4% year-on-year, and prices in the non-ferrous metal smelting and rolling processing industry increased by 22.4%, an increase of 6.2 and 0.3 percentage points respectively from the previous month; prices in the oil and natural gas mining industry increased by 5.2% from a decrease of 12.9% in the previous month.
At the same time, the supply and demand relationship in some industries in China has improved, and prices have risen. As the market competition order continues to optimize, the manufacturing prices of photovoltaic equipment and components and lithium-ion battery manufacturing have increased by 5.2% and 2.5% year-on-year respectively; "artificial intelligence +" has accelerated its expansion and the demand for computing power has grown rapidly. The price of optical fiber manufacturing has increased by 76.1% year-on-year, and the price of external storage equipment and components has increased by 21.1% year-on-year.
From a month-on-month perspective that better reflects recent price changes, China's PPI rose by 1.0% in March, rising for six consecutive months. The increase expanded by 0.6 percentage points from the previous month, the largest increase in 48 months.
Among the major industries, affected by the sharp rise in international crude oil and other prices, prices in petroleum-related industries rose rapidly. Among them, the price of oil and natural gas extraction industry increased by 15.8% month-on-month, the price of petroleum, coal and other fuel processing industry increased by 5.8%, and the price of chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing industry increased by 3.6%. The increase was 10.7, 5.4 and 2.3 percentage points respectively compared with the previous month. This was the main reason for the expansion of PPI month-on-month increase.
Pang Ming, a distinguished senior researcher at the National Finance and Development Laboratory, analyzed that China's PPI turned from negative to positive year-on-year in March. The main driving force came from disturbances in the international energy market and the recovery of domestic production means prices, marking that the profit improvement in the industrial sector has entered a period of substantial realization. The subsequent PPI is expected to enter a moderate expansion range, but whether the trend can continue still needs to be observed in the dual changes in the global energy market and domestic industrial production. (over)
