China's consumer inflation rate for 2007 should be about 4.5 per cent to 4.6 per cent, the country's chief statistics official said, according to a government news agency report last Friday.

Xie Fuzhan, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, made the comment in an appearance Thursday at Beijing's Tsinghua University, the Xinhua News Agency said. The forecast was in line with those of other officials and private economists.

Last year, China's consumer inflation rate was 2.0 per cent.

Inflation spiked to a monthly rate of 6.5 per cent in October, blamed mostly on a rise in food prices due to shortages of some items. But those shortages are expected to end soon as a new crop is harvested, and price rises for other items such as fuel have stayed low.

- AP