China's Nov CPI up 2.3% and PPI up 12.9%

China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, grew by 2.3 percent year-on-year last month, up from 1.5 percent in October and marking a 15-month high, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday.

The CPI growth went up due to last year's low comparison base as well as rising prices of vegetables and industrial consumer goods including oil and diesel, the NBS said.

On a month-on-month basis, the CPI grew by 0.4 percent in November, down from 0.7 percent in the previous month, resulting from the combined impacts of seasonal factors, rising costs and sporadic COVID-19 cases, the NBS said.

The growth in core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices and is deemed a better gauge of the supply-demand relationship in the economy, came in at 1.2 percent in November, versus 1.3 percent in October.

Meanwhile, China's producer price index, which gauges factory-gate prices, rose by 12.9 percent year-on-year last month, down from 13.5 percent in October and marking the first drop in PPI growth in five months.

"With a better implementation of the policies to safeguard supplies and stabilize prices, the surging momentum of coal and metal prices, among other kinds of energies as well as raw materials, has started to be curbed," said Dong Lijuan, a senior NBS statistician.

Specifically, the price spike in the sectors of coal extraction and ferrous and nonferrous metal smelting slowed down last month, though the prices in oil extraction and gas production industries rose faster than the previous month.

The PPI remained relatively stable on a monthly basis in November, down from a 2.5 percent increase in October.