October 28, China's consumer price gains will continue to decline after slowing from this year's peak in July, the nation's top economic planner said on Thursday.

The nation’s inflation is "generally controllable” and the macro-controll measures are effective, said Peng Sen, deputy chief of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

The consumer price index (CPI) is likely to continue to fall in the last 2 months of this year, according to Peng.

The vice director of the Macro Economy Research Institute under the NDRC, Chen Dongqi, said the pace of decline in consumer prices would accelerate in the last 3 months of this year and the trend would be maintained in 2012.

The possibility of a larger decline in the inflation rate in 2012 can not be ruled out, Chen noted.

In view of inflation and economic growth, Peng said the government should seek to control consumer price increases at a reasonable level, lower than the pace of economic growth.

The price gains should be also lower than income rises, Peng said.

The government should better deal with the relationships between stabilizing prices and maintaining economic growth, market and government, producers and consumers, and between pushing forward pricing reform and stabilizing overal price levels, he said.

The country’s CPI rose 6.1% year-on-year in September, moderating from 6.2% in August and a 37-month high of 6.5% in July. The full-year government target is to tame inflation growth to within 4%, but that is looking incresingly unlikely.

China’s gross domestic product expanded 9.1% y-o-y in the third quarter of the year, the slowest pace in 2 years.

edited by Tony ZHU

Source:21cbh.com