(Yicai Global) May 17 -- The stalled growth of China’s consumer prices is interim and temporary, a spokesperson for the country’s macro-economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, said today.

Consumer prices are expected to gradually return to where they were in recent years, Meng Wei said at a press briefing, fending off concerns that the minimal growth in the consumer price index, a gauge of consumer inflation, and the continually falling producer price index, a measure of industrial profits, might be a sign of deflation.

The low prices are temporary and there is no deflation, another NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui said yesterday. And deflation is unlikely to show up later, he added.

China’s consumer inflation edged up just 0.1 percent last month from a year ago, the slowest rate in more than two years, after gaining 0.7 percent in March, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on May 11. And consumer prices in seven provincial-level regions, including Shanghai, eastern Anhui province and central Henan province, dropped into negative territory.

The slowing growth in consumer prices is a result of multiple factors that are import-related, cyclical and seasonal, Meng said. The high base line in the same period last year led to big year-on-year declines in the price of some products, which adversely impacted the CPI.

Price slumps in fresh vegetables, gasoline as well as fossil fuel-powered small cars dragged the CPI down by about 0.9 percentage point in April. And the downward trend in many industries such as petroleum, natural gas, iron ore, copper and aluminum as well as coal caused the PPI to tumble 2.9 percentage points.

The price of international commodities, such as oil, dropped this year, after soaring last year due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, imposing import-related effects on the Chinese market, Meng said.

And while there were off-season gains in the price of fresh vegetables in April 2022, this year there were big declines. Not to mention the ongoing price war in the auto sector, especially among fossil fuel-powered small cars. All of these factors are not helping spur inflation.

Editors：Shi Yi, Kim Taylor