China's factory gate prices fell 1.5% March year-on-year, data showed on Friday, marking the sharpest decline in five months and suggesting the economy remains some way off from mounting a durable recovery from the coronavirus shock that shut down the country. The producer price index reading, published by the National Bureau of Statistics, compared with a median forecast of a 1.1% fall tipped by a Reuters poll of analysts and a 0.4% drop in February. March's downturn was also the sharpest drop since the 1.6% decline in October 2019. Consumer inflation rose 4.3% in March from a year earlier, the statistics bureau ... (full story)

China’s manufacturing sector continued to suffer from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in March, as data released on Friday showed factory gate prices contracted at a faster pace last month. The producer price index, reflecting the prices that factories charge wholesalers for their products, dropped 1.5 per cent year-on-year last month, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed. That was worse than the 0.4 per cent fall in February and above the 1.1 per cent contraction tipped in a Bloomberg survey of analysts. Meanwhile, China’s consumer price index rose 4.3 per cent from a year earlier, falling ... (full story)