BEIJING, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- China's inflation, a source of concern to policymakers, eased for the fifth straight month in December to 4.1 percent, the bureau of statistics said Thursday.
The December year-on-year rate as measured by the consumer price index was down from 4.2 percent in November, and well below the 37-month high of 6.5 percent in July.
For all of 2011, China's inflation rose 5.4 percent from 2010 -- much higher than the government's target of 4 percent. China is the world's second-largest economy after the United States.
The bureau said the latest improvement was credited to falling prices of non-food items, and the government's tightening measures, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Food prices, accounting for a third of the goods in CPI calculation, rose 1.2 percent in December.
Separately, the bureau said China's producer price index, which measures inflation at the wholesale level, rose 1.7 percent in December year-on-year, down from 2.7 percent in November.
The report said China made controlling prices a top priority last year and implemented a series of measures including tightening monetary policy, cracking down on speculation, increasing food supplies and reducing circulation costs.
The Financial Times said the December inflation could mean a continuation of cautious policy loosening as the economy slows.
"This continued moderation in prices pressures is a welcome development and will increase the scope for policy to respond should growth start to weaken more sharply in coming months," economist Brian Jackson at the Royal Bank of Canada in Hong Kong told the Times.
