Vegetable prices fuel Chinese inflation Higher vegetable prices helped fuel Chinese inflation in September, although price rises for the year are likely to stay rooted below government targets. China's consumer price index for September rose 3.1 per cent compared with a year earlier, accelerating from August's 2.6 per cent year-on-year increase, according to National Statistics Bureau data released on Monday. Most of the increase was attributed to loftier food prices, which were up 6.1 per cent in the month compared with a year earlier, driven by fresh vegetable prices that jumped nearly 19 per cent and fresh fruit prices, up 12.5 per cent. The government has identified an "upper limit" for annual inflation of 3.5 per cent and a "lower limit" for economic growth of 7.5 per cent, and has said it will act to stimulate activity or damp price increases if either of these limits is breached. Data due out on Friday are likely to show that the world's second-largest economy expanded by between 7.5 and 8 per cent in the third quarter, after restrained stimulus measures helped avert fears of a slowdown over the summer. Growth could flag again through the remainder of the year, as the impact of easier credit fades and as companies complete inventory restocking, said Wang Tao, analyst at UBS. "We expect the upcoming September data to show that economic activities have remained solid though the sequential momentum may have softened slightly," Ms Wang said. We expect fourth-quarter growth momentum to be somewhat weaker than in the third quarter. China's economy grew 7.7 per cent last year, its slowest annual pace since 1999, and if growth drops below 7.6 per cent for the full year, it will be the slowest pace since 1990, when the country faced international sanctions in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre. After slowing from 7.7 per cent in the first quarter to 7.5 per cent growth in the second, growth China's gross domestic product is likely to have accelerated slightly in the third quarter. Over the summer, Beijing eased its fiscal policy and launched an investment-heavy "mini-stimulus," after interbank markets froze up in June and fuelled fears that China could face a homegrown financial crisis. A stronger domestic economy helped lift Chinese imports in September by more than 7 per cent compared with a year before. But exports were more sluggish than expected, contracting by 0.3 per cent in a sign of continued weakness in major export markets. Exports were also unusually weak in South Korea and Taiwan in September. Chinese manufacturers are still plagued by deflation. Producer prices fell by 1.3 per cent on year in September, a slight improvement over the 1.6 per cent decline in August. Producer prices have been falling since April 2012, indicating the stubborn excess capacity in China's manufacturing sector.