Forecast: January CPI Year-on-year Increase or Fall?

Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics will publish the national consumer price index (CPI) in January 2022, and several agencies predict that the CPI rate of increase in January may continue to fall.

Forecast: January CPI year-on-year increase or fall

Pork prices to expand the rate of decline, driven by December 2021 CPI rose significantly back to the "1 era" again. In addition, the CPI for the year 2021 is within 3% of the control target.

What will be the CPI year-on-year increase in January 2022? According to Flush iFinD statistics, 11 institutions on January CPI year-on-year increase in the average forecast value of 1.26%. If the above average forecast value is fulfilled, January CPI year-on-year rate of increase will continue to fall.

"Prices of edible agricultural products have fallen in the ring since the beginning of January, averaging 124.44 points in the first three weeks, down 1.4 percentage points from the previous month, and the year-on-year rate of decline has widened."

Liu Xuezhi, a senior researcher at the Bank of Communications Financial Research Center, said pork prices fell overall, with the national average wholesale price of pork at 22.2 yuan per kilogram from Jan. 1 to 26, down nearly 7.5 percentage points from the previous month.

"After measurement, the CPI tail factor in January was 0.39%. Comprehensive above, food prices in January are expected to rise by a limited rate of ringgit, will be lower than in previous years, non-food prices pick up ringgit, CPI rose between 1.1%-1.3% year-on-year, taking the median value of 1.2%, lower than in December last year." Liu Xuezhi pointed out.

CPI may rise slightly in 2022

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs monitoring, the fifth week of 2022 (January 31-February 6), the weekly average price of pork wholesale market per kilogram 21.86 yuan, flat ringgit, 51.7% lower than last year; the weekly average price of 28 kinds of vegetables monitored by the key monitoring 5.97 yuan per kilogram, up 3.5% ringgit, 2.0% lower than last year; the weekly average price of six kinds of fruits monitored by the key monitoring 7.03 yuan, up 2.8%, 11.2% higher than last year.

"Spring Festival pork and fresh vegetables into the peak season of sales, coupled with a small rebound in oil prices and the downward transmission of PPI, CPI year-on-year growth will remain moderate." Tan Zhuo, director of the Institute of Macroeconomic Research at the China Merchants Bank Research Institute, believes.

Liu Xuezhi said, looking ahead to the price situation in 2022, CPI is expected to rise slightly, PPI will fall back to a high level, the scissors between PPI and CPI will be significantly converged, and overall prices will remain moderate.

In Liu Xuezhi's view, the current pork prices are experiencing a bottoming-out rebound phase, and it is expected that the overall year-on-year increase in pork prices will rise in the future, playing a role in raising food prices.

In addition, China's capacity supply capacity, the end demand is basically stable, there will not be a mismatch between supply and demand resulting in a large area of price increases. Therefore, the CPI will rise in 2022, the annual rate of increase may be higher than 2021, but the overall rate of increase will be less than 3%, there is no inflationary pressure.

Change in the chain of prices of various goods and services

In January, food, tobacco and alcohol prices rose 1.1%, affecting the CPI rose by about 0.30 percentage points. Food, fresh fruit prices rose 7.2%, affecting the CPI rose about 0.14 percentage points; aquatic products prices rose 4.1%, affecting the CPI rose about 0.08 percentage points; fresh vegetables prices rose 3.1%, affecting the CPI rose about 0.07 percentage points;

egg prices fell 1.1%, affecting the CPI fell about 0.01 percentage points; animal meat prices fell 0.8%, affecting the CPI fell about 0.03 percentage points. Impact CPI fell by about 0.03 percentage points, of which the price of pork fell by 2.5%, affecting the CPI fell by about 0.04 percentage points.

The other seven categories of prices rose four to one flat two down. Among them, transportation and communications, other supplies and services prices rose 1.1% and 0.9%, education, culture and entertainment, health care prices rose 0.2% and 0.1%; residential prices were flat; clothing, household goods and services prices were down 0.5% and 0.1%.