BEIJING: Chinese inflation hit a 10-month high in February while growth in industrial production and retail sales slowed, official data showed yesterday, complicating policymakers' efforts to boost recovery.
Growth in the world's second-largest economy slowed to a 13-year low of 7.8 percent in 2012, though a pick-up in the final three months had raised hopes for a rebound this year.
The consumer price index — a main gauge of inflation — rose 3.2 percent year-on-year in February, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), as holiday season spending and rapid credit growth accelerated price rises.
The figure was a spike from January's 2.0 percent and the highest result since April 2012, when it stood at 3.4 percent. It was also above the median forecast of 3.0 percent in a poll of 14 economists by Dow Jones Newswires.
Inflation is a key issue for the ruling Communist Party as it brings with it the risk of popular discontent over rising prices and the threat of social unrest.
Other indicators announced yesterday by the NBS provided further signs that a budding recovery may be fragile.
"The Chinese government is caught in the dilemma of dealing with slower growth and yet higher inflation again," Ren Xianfang, a Beijing-based analyst with research firm IHS Global Insight, said in a research note.
Industrial output, which reflects production at China's factories, workshops and mines, rose 9.9 percent year-on-year over the first two months of 2013, compared with 11.4 percent in the same period of 2012.
Retail sales — the main gauge of consumer spending — were up 12.3 percent over the period, slowing from 14.7 percent in the January-February period of last year.
Giving the figures for the two-month period minimized distorted comparisons due to the Lunar New Year, which fell last month this year but in January for 2012.
Fixed-asset investment — a key measure of official spending on infrastructure — rose 21.2 percent in January-February, higher than the 20.6 percent for the full year of 2012 and underscoring what analysts say is an old-fashioned recovery led by fast investment growth.
"Such a recovery is predicated on relatively accommodative monetary policy conditions," ANZ analysts said in a research note.
"And it could falter once monetary policy becomes tight on concerns of rising risks of inflation and (a) property bubble."
Chinese banks more than doubled their lending in January from December, the latest official data available showed, as the government seeks to boost economic growth.
Last year, authorities cut interest rates twice and loosened requirements for how much money banks must keep on hand in a bid to stimulate lending.
Outgoing Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday announced an economic growth target of 7.5 percent for 2013 — the same as last year's — and reiterated the government's vow to retool the economy away from investment-led growth.
Wen also said that the 2013 inflation target was set at 3.5 percent, lower than last year's goal of 4.0 percent, but higher than the actual inflation rate for 2012, which came in at 2.6 percent.
"China is still under considerable inflationary pressure this year," he said in a report to the opening of the National People's Congress, China's annual parliamentary session.
Analysts said Beijing faced a delicate job to strike a balance between curbing asset bubbles, highlighted by rising property prices, and consolidating the recovery.
"That means very little room for the government to wiggle on the monetary policy front, and the burden of stabilizing growth will be borne by fiscal largesse this year," IHS Global Insight's Ren said.
Some analysts, however, downplayed concerns, arguing inflation was not an imminent threat and that it was premature to embrace tightening measures.
"CPI inflation is a potential concern, but is surely not a big threat now to force the government to start an imminent policy tightening," Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts said in a note.
"The new cabinet... will likely maintain its overall pro-growth policy stance in the first half of 2013."
China’s inflation surges to 10-month high
China’s inflation surges to 10-month high
Saudi-built AI takes on financial crime
- Mozn’s FOCAL reflects the Kingdom’s growing fintech ambitions
RIYADH: As financial institutions face increasingly complex threats from fraud and money laundering, technology companies are racing to build systems that can keep pace with evolving risks.
One such effort is FOCAL, an AI-powered compliance and fraud prevention platform developed by Riyadh-based enterprise artificial intelligence company Mozn.
Founded in 2017, Mozn was established with a focus on building AI technology tailored to regional market needs and regulatory environments. Over time, the company has expanded its reach beyond Saudi Arabia, developing advanced AI solutions used by financial institutions in multiple markets. It has also gained international recognition, including being listed among the World’s Top 250 Fintech Companies for the second consecutive year.
In January 2026, Mozn’s flagship product, FOCAL, was named a Category Leader in Chartis Research’s RiskTech Quadrant 2025 for both AML Transaction Monitoring and KYC (Know Your Customer) Data and Solutions, placing it among 10 companies globally to receive this designation.
Malik Alyousef, co-founder of Mozn and chief technology officer of FOCAL, told Arab News that the platform initially focused on core anti-money laundering functions when development began in 2018. These included customer screening, watchlists, and transaction monitoring to support counter-terrorism financing efforts and the detection of suspicious activity.
As financial crime tactics evolved, the platform expanded into fraud prevention. According to Alyousef, this shift introduced a more proactive model, beginning with device risk analysis and later incorporating tools such as device fingerprinting, behavioral biometrics, and transaction fraud detection.
More recently, FOCAL has moved toward platform convergence through its Financial Crime Intelligence layer, a vendor-neutral framework designed to bring together multiple systems into a single interface for investigation and reporting. The approach allows institutions to gain a consolidated view without replacing their existing technology infrastructure.
“Our architecture eliminates blind spots in financial crime detection. It gives institutions a complete view of the user journey, combining transactional and non-transactional behavioral data,” Alyousef said.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Some electronic money institutions using the platform have reported fraud reductions of up to 90 percent.
• The platform combines anti-money laundering and fraud prevention into a single financial crime intelligence system.
• FOCAL integrates with existing banking systems without requiring institutions to replace their technology stack.
Beyond its underlying architecture, Alyousef pointed to several areas where FOCAL aims to differentiate itself in a competitive market. One is its emphasis on proactive fraud prevention, which assesses risk throughout the customer lifecycle — from onboarding and login behavior to ongoing account activity — with the goal of stopping fraud before losses occur.
He described the platform as an “expert-led model,” highlighting the availability of on-the-ground support for system design, tuning, assessments, and continuous optimization throughout its use.
“FOCAL is designed to be extended,” Alyousef added, noting its adaptability and the ability for clients to customize schemas, rules, and data fields to match their business models and risk tolerance. This flexibility, he said, allows institutions to respond more quickly to emerging fraud patterns.
Alyousef also emphasized the importance of local context in the platform’s development.
“The platform incorporates regional regulatory requirements and language considerations. Global tools often struggle with local context, naming conventions and compliance nuances — we are designed specifically with these realities in mind,” he said.
FOCAL is currently used by a range of organizations, including traditional banks, digital banks, fintech firms, electronic money institutions, payment companies, and other financial service providers. Alyousef said results from live deployments have been significant, with some large EMI clients reporting fraud reductions of up to 90 percent.
“Clients benefit not only from reduced fraud losses but also from an improved customer experience, as the system minimizes unnecessary friction and false rejections,” he said. “Beyond financial services, we also work with organizations in e-commerce and telecommunications.”
Looking ahead, Alyousef said the company sees agentic AI as a key direction for the future of financial crime prevention, both in the region and globally. Mozn, he added, is investing heavily in this area to enhance investigative workflows and operational efficiency, building on the capabilities of its Financial Crime Intelligence layer.
“We are pioneers in introducing agentic AI for financial crime investigation and rule-building. Our roadmap increasingly emphasizes automation, advanced machine learning and AI-assisted workflows to improve investigator productivity and reduce false positives.”
As AI tools become more widely available, Alyousef warned that the risk of misuse by criminals is also increasing, raising the bar for defensive technologies.
“Our goal is to stay ahead of that curve and to contribute meaningfully to positioning Saudi Arabia and the region as globally competitive leaders in AI,” he said.
