China’s consumer inflation picks up after holiday spending spurt

China’s consumer inflation accelerated for the first time since August, in what’s likely a blip caused by a burst of household spending around the Lunar New Year holiday even as deflationary pressures persist.

The consumer price index rose 0.5 percent in January from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Sunday, compared with a 0.1percent gain in the previous month. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg was a 0.4 percent increase.

A temporary spending boom during the eight-day break is briefly obscuring the extent of the deflationary challenge facing the world’s second-biggest economy.

China’s factory deflation extended into a 28th month with a 2.3 percent drop, flat with the index’s contraction in December.