"China’s Inflation Tops Forecasts As Supply Pressures Worsen"

And as we just saw, there is going to be some pressure on food prices with a couple hundred million people starting to hoard comestibles.

From Reuters, April 10:

• Mar PPI +8.3% y/y vs +7.9% poll, +8.8% in Feb
• Mar CPI +1.5% y/y vs +1.2% poll, +0.9% in Feb

BEIJING, April 11 (Reuters) - China's factory-gate and consumer prices rose faster than expected in March as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, persistent supply chain bottlenecks and production snags caused by local COVID flare-ups added to commodity cost pressures.

The surge in raw materials costs is hobbling economies worldwide and in China has raised questions among some analysts about just how much its central bank will be able to ease monetary policy.

China's producer price index (PPI) increased 8.3% year-on-year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Monday. While that was slower than the 8.8% seen in February, it beat a forecast for a 7.9% rise in a Reuters poll.

Upstream pressures pushed up consumer prices, which rose 1.5% year-on-year, the fastest in three months, speeding up from 0.9% in February and beating expectations of 1.2%.

Nomura analysts said possible delays in crop planting caused by new COVID-19 outbreaks in the country and the Ukraine conflict could create new food price pressures in the second half of the year.

"Rising food and energy price inflation limits the space for the (People's Bank of China) to cut interest rates, despite the rapidly worsening economy," Nomura said in a note....

....MUCH MORE