CPI up 5.5% in May

China's consumer price index (CPI), the main gauge of inflation, rose 5.5 percent year-on-year in May, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.

CPI rose 5.2 percent year-on-year in the first five months of the year, NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun said.

Food prices, which account for nearly a third of the basket of goods in the nation's CPI calculation, surged 11.7 percent in May from a year earlier.

The pace of increase accelerated from April's 11.5-percent rise.

Growth in non-food prices also accelerated, rising by 2.9 percent in May from a year earlier, Sheng said.

April's non-food prices increased 2.7 percent year-on-year.

Compared with April, food prices slid 0.3 percent in May, of which vegetable prices plunged 9.3 percent month-on-month.

The producer price index (PPI), a main gauge of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 6.8 percent in May from a year ago, unchanged from April's annual growth.

PPI up 6.8% in May

China's producer price index (PPI), a major measure of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 6.8 percent in May year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.

Industrial value-added output up 13.3%

China's industrial value-added output grew 13.3 percent year-on-year in May this year, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on Tuesday.

The year-on-year industrial value-added output growth in May was 0.1 percentage point lower than that in April, according to the NBS.

The May data took the industrial value-added output growth in the first five months of this year to 14 percent, down 0.2 percentage point from the January-April period, NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun said at a press conference.

On a monthly basis, the industrial value-added output expanded by only 1.03 percent in May from April, Sheng said.

Industrial value-added output measures the final results of industrial production, or in other words the value of gross industrial output minus intermediate inputs, such as raw materials and labor costs.

China's fixed asset investment up 25.8% in first five months

China's fixed asset investment rose to 9.03 trillion yuan ($1.39 trillion) in the first five months, up 25.8 percent from the same period last year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Tuesday.

In May, fixed asset investment rose 1.02 percent from April. During the first five months, investment in the nation's property sector rose 34.6 percent year-on-year to reach 1.87 trillion yuan -- of which 1.33 trillion yuan went into residential housing, an increase of 37.8 percent from the same period last year.

China's retail sales of consumer goods up 16.9% in May

China's retail sales of consumer goods rose 16.9 percent year-on-year to 1.47 trillion yuan ($226.77 billion) in May this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Tuesday.

The reading fell by 0.2 percentage points from April, according to figures released by the NBS. From January to May this year, retail sales grew 16.6 percent from the same period last year to 7.13 trillion yuan, the NBS said.

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