China Inflation May Provide Room for Stimulus: Economy

China’s inflation eased to the slowest pace in 20 months while new loans, industrial output and retail sales were below analysts’ forecasts, boosting the case for easing monetary policy in the world’s second-biggest economy.

Consumer prices gained 3.2 percent in February from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said. Local-currency loans were 710.7 billion yuan ($113 billion) in February. Factory production rose 11.4 percent in January and February combined and retail sales advanced 14.7 percent. Data in the first two months of the year are distorted by a weeklong holiday.