Most Beijing residents think consumer prices too high

Inflation expectations among Beijing residents rose in the third quarter and most consider consumer prices to be unacceptably high, the Beijing News reported Sunday. Some 69.1 percent of Beijing residents said current prices were "too high to be acceptable," up 4.8 percentage points from the second quarter, the newspaper cited the results of a central bank survey of 1,400 Beijing residents as saying. Among the residents surveyed, 47.1 percent said they expect consumer prices to climb further toward the year's end, the central bank said. The central bank has stated several times that stabilizing prices remains its priority, as inflation has already exceeded the government's four-percent target for the year. China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, eased to 6.2 percent in August after reaching a 37-month high of 6.5 percent in July, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. The central bank survey also found that Beijing residents became more willing to save rather than invest during the third quarter, due to the sluggish stock and property markets. Among the residents surveyed, 26.6 percent said they have become more willing to spend, up 5.6 percentage points from the second quarter. With the one-year deposit rate at 3.5 percent and inflation running above 6 percent, savers actually lose money by keeping their cash in banks, which has encouraged people to spend more, according to the survey.