(Yicai) March 11 -- China’s consumer prices rose in February for the first time in five straight months thanks to robust spending over the lunar new year holiday.

The consumer price index, the main measure of inflation, edged up 0.7 percent in February from a year earlier, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. It fell 0.8 percent in January and 0.3 percent in December.

The rebound mainly resulted from the Chinese New Year holiday being in February this year while it was in January last year, NBS statistician Dong Lijuan said on March 9. From January to February, the CPI was on average unchanged from a year ago, she added.

Increased demand for travel and entertainment over the holiday led to non-food prices rising 1.1 percent, up from 0.4 percent in January, Dong noted. Tourism, air tickets, and transport rental prices jumped 23 percent, 21 percent, and 17 percent, respectively, she added.

The cost of food fell 0.9 percent, but the decline narrowed 5 percentage points from January, Dong said, adding that pork prices rose 0.2 percent after dropping for nine months in a row. Excluding food and energy, the core CPI rose 1.2 percent, the biggest increase since February 2022, she pointed out.

With travel and consumption entering a traditional off-season after the Chinese New Year holiday, sustaining the uptick in the CPI will be difficult. Year-on-year growth rate will likely slow to 0.3 percent in March to May, according to a research report by Soochow Securities.

In addition, due to the off-season in industrial production during the holiday, the producer price index measuring factory-gate prices of industrial goods dipped 2.7 percent in February, with the decline expanding 0.2 point from a month earlier, according to NBS figures.

Insufficient internal demand remains the main reason for the PPI decline, Soochow Securities noted. The pace of production after the holiday is slower than that in the same period of last year, and February’s sales data for new homes was lackluster, resulting in slower progress in infrastructure and real estate construction.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Martin Kadiev