CHINA'S inflation rate surged last month to its highest rate in nearly 12 years as heavy snowstorm disrupted food supplies.
The National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday the consumer price index rose 8.7 percent year-on-year in February, the biggest jump since the 8.9 percent recorded in May 1996.
The 8.7 percent rise in February was driven by a 23.3 percent jump in food costs, the bureau said.
Price rises for some individual goods were even more dramatic: pork was up 63.4 percent and vegetables 46 percent, contributing more than 80 percent of the CPI increase.
Non-food prices edged up only 1.6 percent from a year earlier.
The February figure was well above market expectations. For example, the Bank of China, the country's second-biggest lender, had predicted a rise of 8.3 percent.
The price rises added to the difficulty China has in reining in the full-year inflation rate, the bureau said, calling for more effective measures to stop overall prices rising too fast.
Bureau chief economist Yao Jingyuan ascribed the February jump mainly to soaring food prices, Lunar New Year shopping and the severe winter weather that hit many parts of China in January and February.
Also, the base of comparison last month was low because of the relatively small CPI rise of 2.7 percent in February last year, Yao said.
The figure, higher than January's 7.1-percent gallop, further departed from the central bank's target of controlling it under 4.8 percent this year.
"The CPI growth expanded at a faster pace than we had expected," said Li Maoyu, an analyst at the Changjiang Securities Co.
"It was mainly caused by the snowstorm which led to short supply and the increasing demand during the Chinese Lunar New Year."
Wang Qing, a Morgan Stanley economist, said the CPI in February "beat their expectations as food shortages proved to be more severe than expected in the aftermath of the snowstorm."