China's annual inflation rate increased to 2.1% in January, slightly under the market forecast, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China said on Friday.
The CPI uptick in January can be partly attributed to the Spring Festival holiday boom and the optimized epidemic response, according to Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician with the NBS.
On a monthly basis, the CPI edged up 0.8 percent. Food prices rose 2.8 percent in January. The growth expanded by 2.3 percentage points month on month, and raised monthly consumer inflation by about 0.52 percentage points, according to the data.
Specifically, the price of pork, a staple meat in China, slumped 10.8 percent in January from the previous month, as the supply of pork continues to increase, Dong said.
However, pork prices still hiked 11.8 percent year on year, narrowing by 10.4 percentage points from the previous month.
Non-food prices rose 1.2 percent from a year earlier. The price growth of gasoline, diesel, and liquified petroleum gas went up by 5.5 percent, 5.9 percent, and 4.9 percent year on year, respectively.
On a monthly basis, the surge in demand for travel and entertainment after the adjustment of the country's COVID-19 response buoyed the prices of plane tickets, movie and show tickets and tours by 20.3 percent, 10.7 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively, according to Dong.
Friday's data also showed that China's producer price index, which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, slid 0.8 percent year on year in January.
