UBS : China's Nov. inflation to edge up to 2%

China's inflation is expected to edge up to 2 percent in November amid recovering economic conditions, according to a forecast from the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS). In its weekly report released on Friday, the investment bank forecast that the country's consumer price index (CPI), the main gauge of inflation, is expected to grow to 2 percent in November. The CPI saw 1.7-percent growth last month, marking its slowest pace since January 2010. Driven up by rising seasonal demand, food prices, which account for nearly one-third of the weighting in the calculation of China's CPI, are likely to continue to rise through the year's end, the report said, citing increased prices for vegetables in major cities in the past week. UBS also expects the yearly CPI growth for 2012 to stand at 2.7 percent, 0.1 percentage point lower than the bank had previously stated. In the same report, the bank raised China's 2012 and 2013 annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecasts to 7.6 percent and 8 percent, respectively. UBS attributed the optimistic economic figures, in part, to better-than-expected export growth and a widening trade surplus in the last few months. China's exports rose 11.6 percent year on year in October, beating market expectations for a rise of 9 percent and stronger than the 9.9-percent increase seen in September, customs data show. The country's economic restructuring may take longer, according to the report, as analysts maintain that investment will still grow considerably faster than consumption in the coming quarters. China will continue its efforts to guarantee an economic recovery in the near term while putting economic restructuring as a long-term goal, as echoed in the keynote report at the recently-concluded 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, according to the UBS report. The National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, said on the sidelines of the national congress that the country is on track to achieve its 7.5-percent growth target set for this year.