China’s consumer prices grew at their fastest rate in almost eight years in October driven by a spike in pork prices caused by an outbreak of African swine fever, according to official figures released Saturday.
The consumer price index (CPI) — a key gauge of retail inflation — hit 3.8 per cent last month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, up from 3.0 per cent in September and the highest annual rate since January 2012. Analysts in a Bloomberg News poll had forecast a rate of 3.4 per cent. Prices of pork, the staple meat in China, have more than doubled in the past year, according to the NBS.