CRI听力：Expert: China's CPI to Keep Declining in the First Half of 2009

China's consumer price index, the main gauge of inflation, rose at 2.4 percent year-on-year in November, its slowest pace over the past 22 months.

Zhao Xijun, finance professor with Renmin University of China, says the figure is in line with most of the previous expectations under the current economic situation at home and abroad.

"Many enterprises in our country have already ceased or reduced their production, indirectly driving down people's income and the consumer demand. The main factors which cause fluctuations in the CPI have also changed. Food prices used to have a great impact on the figure. With the harvest of grain and the declining world food prices, we have got sufficient grain supplies, so the domestic food prices have also dropped."(www.hXen.com)

The professor adds there is still a lot of room for both the CPI and PPI to further decline due to the worldwide slump of raw material and energy prices.

He predicts that the CPI will continue to drop in the first half of next year.