This archive report was first published on 9 July 2020.
China's economy is slowly recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, with factory-gate prices falling at a slower rate in June than expected.
According to official data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the producer price index (PPI) fell by 3% from a year ago, a slower decline than the 3.7% drop in May.
June marked the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak in January that producer prices rose, noted Martin Rasmussen, China economist for Capital Economics.
He attributed this to evidence that industrial demand had mostly recovered by the end of the second quarter.
China is working to bounce back from a historic economic contraction in the first quarter caused by the coronavirus, which shut down much of the country.
However, the world's second-largest economy now faces a threat from weakening global demand as the virus hammers key trading partners.
The PPI pick-up comes as prices of international commodities saw some recovery in June, and as the domestic manufacturing industry and market demand improved, said NBS senior statistician Dong Lijuan.
China's consumer price index (CPI) came in at 2.5%, a 0.1 point rise from May, driven by a pick-up in food prices, particularly pork prices, which rose 81.6% on-year in June.
Analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected PPI to fall 3.2%.
