THE country will find it difficult to meet its target of limiting consumer price inflation to about 4.8 percent this year, a senior official with the National Bureau of Statistics was quoted as saying.

“The 4.8 percent figure is an aspiration, and the figures for the first quarter suggest this target will be very hard to hit,” Peng Zhilong, director-general of the department of national accounts, was quoted by Saturday’s Shanghai Securities News as telling an economic seminar.

Peng said five factors were preventing a downturn in inflation, which surged to an annual rate of 8.0 percent in the first quarter of 2008.

They were excessive demand caused by rapid economic growth; flows of money into China for trade, investment and speculation; rising wages; the central bank’s interest rate hikes, which had raised companies’ costs; and rising asset prices.

Peng was also quoted as saying China’s macroeconomic tightening policies and slower growth in the global economy made a slowdown in the Chinese economy this year inevitable.

But he said it was premature to talk about the possibility of China facing stagflation, since the country would be able to maintain growth of about 9 percent this year and inflation remained within a controllable range.(SD-Agencies)