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Chinese consumer prices climbed 2.7% year-over-year (YoY) in June, beating expectations for a 2.5% rise. Meanwhile, producer prices fell 2.7%, more than expectations for a 2.6% fall.
This compares with a 2.1% rise in consumer prices and a 2.9% fall in producer prices in May.
Producer prices have been negative for 16 months and Bloomberg BRIEF economist Michael McDonough tweeted that this showed "tremendous slack in the manufacturing sector."
Earlier this year, CLSA's Christopher Wood wrote that PPI "is as good an indicator as any of the deflationary excess capacity in the system, which is why local fund managers are fond of tracking the correlation between PPI and nominal GDP growth, and also more recently with the A share market."
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Commerce reported that food prices jumped in June, driven by rising seafood and meat prices.
Food inflation climbed 4.9%, from 3.2% in May. Vegetable prices increased 9.7% and meat prices were up 4.8%. Pork prices were up 1.1%, after falling 4.9% in May. Non-food yoy CPI inflation remained flat at 1.6% in June.
