By IANS,
Beijing : China’s consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, eased slightly to 6.1 percent year-on-year in September from 6.2 percent in August, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Friday.
On a monthly basis, consumer prices rose 0.5 percent in September, said the NBS in a statement at its website.
In the first nine months of this year, China’s CPI climbed 5.7 percent from the same period last year, up from 5.4 percent year-on-year in the first half, reported Xinhua.
Food prices, which account for nearly one-third of the basket of goods in the nation’s CPI calculation, was up 13.4 percent in September from a year earlier and 1.1 percent month-on-month, according to the NBS.
China’s CPI hit a 37-month high of 6.5 percent in July this year, which was far above the Chinese government’s full-year target of 4 percent for 2011.
China’s Producer Price Index (PPI), a major measure of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 6.5 percent in September year-on-year, down from 7.3 percent in August.