China’s National Bureau of Statistics said on 10 September that the producer price index for industrial products was 3.8% higher in August than a year earlier. It rose 0.4% from July. The purchasing price index for industrial producers increased 5.8% year on year and 0.3% month on month. For January through August, average producer prices were 2.0% higher than a year earlier, while industrial producers’ purchase prices were up 3.2%. These indexes track prices at the production stage. They are different from consumer inflation and do not show that costs pass through to every firm or product at the same rate.

The price index for means of production rose 5.0% year on year, while the index for consumer goods fell 0.5%. Within production inputs, prices for mining and quarrying climbed 17.8%, raw materials rose 6.7% and processed goods increased 3.1%. On the purchasing side, non-ferrous metals and cables were up 19.8%, fuel and power 9.8%, and raw chemical materials 9.5% from a year earlier. By contrast, producer prices for consumer goods included a 2.3% fall for food and a 1.2% decline for clothing. The split shows that stronger input costs did not appear uniformly across the selling-price categories measured by the release.