China's consumer price growth slowed to 2 percent year on year in January after touching a seven-month high of 2.5 percent in December, the National Bureau of Statistics said this afternoon.
The slowdown was due to a higher comparative base and normalized food supply, and analysts said inflation rate will rise moderately in the longer term.
Food costs, which account for nearly one-third in the CPI basket, rose 2.9 percent from a year earlier in January, down from the increase of 4.2 percent a month earlier. Vegetable prices, which soared 14.8 percent in December due to supply disruption amid the coldest weather in nearly three decades, expanded merely 2.6 percent in January.
Analysts said the easing of inflation last month was a temporary phenomenon out of a very high comparative base a year ago. The CPI rose 4.5 percent in January 2012.
"January's inflation may be among the lowest levels for this year," said Lian Ping, chief economist at Bank of Communications. "For the longer term, the CPI will be powered by a recovering economy, rising wages and increasing prices of resources."
Lu Zhengwei, chief economist at Industrial Bank, said the trend will be an accelerating CPI, but its growth strength will remain modest for the country to handle.
"It is unlikely to have sharp rates as high as 4 percent like those a few years ago," Lu said.
Under such circumstances, both economists expected no immediate monetary policy changes in the future as the economy is well on the way of recovery while inflation remains controllable.
China will maintain moderate growth in its credit supply and social financing scale this year in a bid to stabilize growth while keeping consumer prices in check, the central bank said earlier.
To counter inflation in the longer run, Lu suggested people to invest wisely such as buying some wealth management products or investing in the stock market which performed well in the past month.
The Producer Price Index, the factory-gate measurement of inflation, fell 1.6 percent year on year in January, narrowing from December's drop of 1.9 percent.