(Yicai Global) Sept. 7 -- The Yicai Chief Economist Confidence Index, a gauge of confidence in China’s economy, for September fell slightly from August’s highest reading in two years but experts believe the economy will continue to pick up this month.

The reading for September rose to 52.23, slightly down from August’s 52.85, according to the findings of the latest Yicai survey which canvassed the opinions of 25 top economists.

China's economy will continue to have a weak recovery and the third quarter might even hit a recent high due to the government’s strong efforts in infrastructure construction, said Guan Qingyou, head of the Reality Institute of Advanced Finance.

The country will tighten its loose monetary policy marginally and is unlikely to conduct across-the-board reserve requirement ratio and interest rate cuts in the short term, Guan said.

August’s consumer price index, a main inflation gauge, is expected to be up 2.41 percent from the same period last year, a slight dip of 0.29 percentage point from the official figure published by the National Bureau of Statistics for July. The producer price index, a measure of industrial profitability, should fall 1.95 percent, less than the minus 2.4 percent that the NBS gave for June.

International crude oil inventories have dropped with the gradual recovery of global demand, and China’s domestic fiscal policies will also boost demand for industrial products, all of which will help further ease PPI deflation, said Wu Ge, chief economist at Changjiang Securities.

Last year’s outbreak of African swine fever caused the CPI to soar, meaning that the overall inflation level this year will continue to fall and could reach zero growth by the end of the year, he added.

This round of the nation’s economic recovery is likely to continue into the first half of next year, said Jiang Chao, an analyst from Haitong Securities.

The gross domestic product growth rate for the second half should rebound to 6 percent and will exceed 7 percent in the first half next year, helped by the low comparison with this year, and fall back to around 6 percent in the second half of 2021, he added.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor