China’s producer price growth rose to the fastest pace in more than eight years last month, while consumer inflation softened markedly thanks to a surprise bumper crop of fresh vegetables, spurred to growth by unseasonably warm weather.

The sixth straight month of expansion for China’s producer price index reported by the National Bureau of Statistics came in at 7.8 per cent, the fastest pace since September 2008 and barely edging out a median forecast of 7.7 per cent from economists surveyed by Reuters.

In month-on-month terms, however, producer price growth softened to 0.6 per cent, down 0.2 percentage points. That was due in part to a fallback in price rises for oil and gas extraction, coal extraction and coal washing, which together pulled down the headline figure by just over a quarter of a percentage point.