China´s consumer price index, a key inflation indicator, rose by 4.1 percent in the first nine months over the same period last year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Thursday.

The CPI eased slightly to 6.2 percent in September after surging to an 11-year monthly high of 6.5 percent in August. Despite the slight drop in September, the CPI for the first nine months still climbed 0.2 percentage points from 3.9 percent for January to August.

The annual CPI rise could be 4.5 percent, said Yi Gang, assistant governor of the People´s Bank of China, or the central bank, at a seminar in Hong Kong on Wednesday. The central bank would wait to see the CPI growth cool to match the deposit rate before considering further rate hikes.

China´s key one-year deposit rate stands at 3.87 percent. Many people withdrew their bank deposits to speculate on stock markets where prices could soar by nearly 10 percent within a trading day.

Food prices jumped by 10.6% in the first nine months, said the NBS.

Grain prices were up by 6.3 percent, meat and poultry 29.1 percent, eggs 26.2 percent, aquatic products 4.6 percent, and fresh vegetables three percent, but fresh fruit prices were down 3.3 percent.

Retail prices of commodities rose by 3.2 percent in the first nine months, the producer prices for manufactured goods were up 2.7 percent, and the purchaser prices for raw materials, fuel and power rose 3.8 percent.

Zhu Zhixin, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said about 86 percent of the rise, or 3.5 percentage points, was generated by food price hikes. He predicted the prices for farm produce, which triggered a drastic rise in the CPI and sparked inflation concerns, would continue to maintain a high level.

On the sidelines of the just concluded Communist Party of China congress, Zhou Xiaochuan, president of the People´s Bank of China, put employment growth as a higher priority than inflation prevention in macro-economic controls and the recalibration of monetary policies.

He said the central bank would continue a prudent monetary policy to facilitate more coordinated economic development and support consumption expansion.

"The government may raise interest rates once or twice before the end of the year to curb inflation," said Song Guoqing, a researcher with Peking University.

Although the CPI slowed slightly in September, largely due to lower pork prices, it was still unstable and the downward trend could be temporary, he said.

Source:xinhua