Pork, other meat prices push CPI to 8-year high

China's year-on-year growth in consumer price index hit an almost eight-year high at 4.5 percent in November due to higher prices of pork and other meat, said the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.

Rising pork prices, however, began to lose momentum last month on a month-on-month basis, which may signal improving supply and easing pressure of price rises, analysts said.

The CPI, a main gauge of inflation, rose to 4.5 percent year-on-year in November, versus 3.8 percent in October and 3.0 percent in September, said a NBS statement on Tuesday.

Data compiled by information provider Wind Info showed the CPI growth last month was the highest since January 2012, when the CPI also increased by 4.5 percent year-on-year.

Pork prices soared by 110.2 percent from a year earlier last month and contributed nearly 60 percent of the CPI growth, according to the NBS.

Prices of beef, lamb, chicken, duck and egg rose by between 11.8 percent and 25.7 percent year-on-year, as the high season of food consumption approached and as people sought substitutes of pork, the bureau said.

Food prices as a whole rose by 19.1 percent year-on-year in November, while the growth in non-food prices remained stable at 1.0 percent, official data said.

On a month-on-month basis, the CPI growth went down to 0.4 percent last month from 0.9 percent in October, as the tight supply of pork eased and pork prices rose by 3.8 percent month-on-month, down by 16.3 percentage points from the previous month.

"As policy efforts had strengthened to stabilize pork supply, the supply of live hog began to gradually bottom out," said a report from Northwest Securities.

Considering that the recent increase in pork prices has priced in the shortfall of supply and that the shortfall is not likely to expand, the possibility of a continuous uptrend in pork prices is low, it said.

Year-on-year CPI may edge down in December before going up again in January. "But such a rise should be a seasonal change instead of a beginning of another uptrend," it added.