Consumer prices in China rose 4.5% in January year-on-year, and up from 4.1% in December and outpacing analysts expectations, Bloomberg reported. This was the first acceleration in inflation reported by the National Bureau of Statistics for six months, and was boosted by spending over the week-long lunar new-year holiday. Stocks fell in Asia and interest rate swaps in China dropped, through the government has not yet made any changes to banks’s reserve requirements, its usual means of easing or tightening monetary policy. “This cuts into the room for monetary policy easing for now,” said Yao Wei, economist with Societe Generale. “However, inflation should resume its decline in February and beyond.” Food costs were up 10.5% year-on-year, an increase from 9.1% in December 2011. “Monetary easing may hold off for one month as the government awaits signs of normalization of the inflation dynamics distorted by the holiday,” said Ding Shuang, economist with Citigroup.