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News from China

China consumer inflation quickens, factory prices beat expectations

14th February 2017

CHINA'S consumer inflation quickened in January due to holiday effects, while prices at factory gates rose faster than expected following soaring oil and gas prices, official data showed Tuesday.

The consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, grew 2.5 percent year on year last month, fractionally above market expectation of 2.4 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics announced Tuesday.

The pace quickened from the 2.1-percent rise in December as the Lunar New Year Holiday pushed up food, transport and travel expenses, according to NBS senior statistician Sheng Guoqing.

On a monthly basis, consumer prices edged up one percent.

Tuesday's data also showed the producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, gained 6.9 percent year on year in January, beating market expectation of 6.5 percent and marking a new high in more than five years.

The jump was mainly driven by the carryover effect of last year's price changes, and rising prices of raw materials and fuels, the NBS explained.

Source: Shanghai Daily, February 14, 2017

China to build more EV charging points

10th February 2017

CHINA plans to build 800,000 charging points, including 100,000 public ones, for electric vehicles this year to meet rising demand, the National Energy Administration said yesterday.

A total of 100,000 public charging points have been installed nationwide in 2016, bringing the total number of public charging points in China to 150,000, the NEA said.

A total of 14,000 kilometers of highway has also been equipped with inter-city fast charging stations, with an average spacing of 48.6km.

Electric vehicles consumed more than 1.2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in China last year, saving about 400,000 tons of fuel, the NEA said.

In Beijing and Shanghai, a charging facility can be found within a radius of less than 5km, while other major cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen are working toward this goal.

“For the new year, China will work to solve the payment and information-related problems for charging facility operators and implement a unified national standard for charging ports of electric vehicles,” said the NEA.

Under China’s 13th Five-Year (2016-2020) Plan, the country will build a nationwide charging station network that will fulfill the power demand of 5 million electric vehicles by 2020.

Source: Shanghai Daily, February 10, 2017

EU stops measures on China’s PET products

9th February 2017

THE European Union has brought an end to 13-year-long trade remedy measures on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) originating in China after terminating an expiry review.

“The European Commission concludes that the expiry review of the anti-dumping measures applicable to imports of PET originating in China should be terminated,” said a statement in the official journal of the EU.

The measures in force are a definitive anti-dumping duty imposed in November 2010 and supposed to expire in November 2015.

However, some PET manufacturers asked for an expiry review in June 2015 to see whether the expiry of these measures result in recurrence of dumping and recurrence of injury to the bloc’s industry.

According to the official document, the applicant, the Committee of Polyethylene Terephthalate Manufacturers in Europe, formally withdrew its request for the expiry review earlier. The EU supervisors found no signs showing such a termination would be against the bloc’s interest in their investigation

Source: Shanghai Daily, February 9, 2017

Chinese insurers invest in 651 projects

8th February 2017

CHINESE insurers had initiated 651 investment projects with registered capital of 1.65 trillion yuan (US$240 billion) in infrastructure and livelihood improvement by the end of 2016, official data showed.

The investment was made through equity and bond purchases, as well as asset support plans, which mostly went into transport, energy, real estate, health care and elderly care, according to the Insurance Asset Management Association of China.

Chinese insurance capital has also provided funds to national development strategies such as the Belt and Road initiative, the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

Insurers had invested 592.3 billion yuan in the Belt and Road initiative and 135.9 billion yuan in the Yangtze River Economic Belt by the end of 2016, said the IAMAC.

The association encourages insurance companies to provide funding to develop the country’s real economy, as insurance capital is considered as large and stable long-term funds.

Speaking of stock investment, the IAMAC called for Chinese insurance companies to be friendly investors to listed companies and cornerstones of the capital market, instead of making aggressive stake buyouts and bringing excessive intervention to the operation of listed companies.

The “barbaric” behavior of some Chinese insurers using leveraged money to buy shares of listed firms raised regulatory concerns late last year. Triggering sharp volatility in the market, such moves annoyed corporate executives and caused individual investors to suffer.

Some 1.88 trillion yuan of China’s investment capital was put into stocks at the end of November, accounting for 14.37 percent of the total, according to the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

The IAMAC said insurers should avoid speculative investment, safeguard the stability of the capital market and keep good communications with stake holders and management of listed firms.

The IAMAC expects insurance companies to raise the holding of blue-chip stocks to rejig their investment portfolio.

Source: Shanghai Daily, February 8, 2017

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