Non-manufacturing PMI hits 3-month high (3)

It is very possible the consumer price index, a gauge of inflation, will be 4 percent for next year, Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said during a forum in Beijing.

Consumer inflation for all of 2012 could be as low as 2.7 percent, which would be a "pretty good" result, he said.

November's CPI will be released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Dec 9.

"The economy remains in the early stages of recovery," said Sun Junwei, an economist with HSBC.

"Despite recent better-than-expected export growth and the upside surprise in November's new export orders, the outlook for external demand remains challenging."

Sun said pressures on employment have not been reduced in a significant way.

The HSBC economist called for policy easing to continue in the rest of this year.

"Monetary policy is likely to lean on quantitative tools through open market operations and reserve requirement ratio cuts in the coming quarters," he said.

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