(Ecns.cn)--Boosted by continuously rising food prices, China's consumer price index (CPI), one of the main gauges of inflation, rose in July to a 37-month high.
The CPI was up 6.5% in July from a year earlier. This was 0.1 percentage points higher than the rise in June, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Tuesday.
That was in accordance with economists' earlier predictions. Most Chinese economists believed the growth of July's CPI would more than 6%.
Food prices, which account for about a third of the calculation of the CPI, climbed 14.8% in July, with pork prices up 56.7%.
Lu Zhengwei, chief economist with the Industrial Bank, said in his microblog that the nation still faces high inflation pressure as consumer prices are exceeding the normal level. He predicted that the central bank will raise interest rates one or two times within the year.
Lian Ping, chief economist with the Bank of Communications, believed the July CPI data would be the highest point of this year. He predicted the number will start to decline in August or September, and return to 4% in December. The entire year's CPI may be 5.2%, Lian said.
The PPI, a major measure of inflation at the wholesale level, grew 7.5% since the previous year in July, 0.4 percentage points higher than in June, the NBS said.
