China Consumer Inflation Slowed to 3% In November, Producer Price Inflation Fell 1.4%

China’s consumer inflation unexpectedly slowed to 3 percent in November, from an eight-month high of 3.2 percent recorded in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, consumer inflation index, or CPI, declined 0.1 percent, compared to a 0.1 percent increase in the previous month.

Analysts were expecting annual CPI to hold steady at 3.2 percent and month-on-month reading to record flat growth.

Annual producer price inflation, or PPI, fell 1.4 percent in November, a drop that was in line with expectations, marking 21 straight months of decline. The PPI fell 1.5 percent in the same period last year, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday. On a monthly basis, producer prices were unchanged.

Food prices rose 5.9 percent in November annually, slowing from October's 6.5 percent increase.

"Inflation will not be a big problem in the coming months and we expect monetary policy to stay neutral," Luo Wenbo, an economist at Xiangcai Securities in Shanghai, told Reuters.

The Shanghai Composite index fell 0.09 percent while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was trading up 0.29 percent in early-afternoon trading.