China's CPI rises 2.4% in March

BEIJING, April 15 (Xinhua) -- China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.4 percent year on year in March, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced here Thursday.

The figure was down 0.7 percent compared with the previous month, and for the first quarter, it was up 2.2 percent over the same period last year.

The producer price index (PPI), a major measure of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 5.9 percent in March from a year earlier.

China's PPI rose 5.2 percent year on year in the first quarter, the NBS said.

In the first quarter, consumer prices in urban areas increased 2.1 percent and in rural regions by 2.4 percent. Food prices, which accounted for about a third of the CPI, gained 5.1 percent.

China is targeting a rise in consumer prices of around 3 percent this year, according to a government work report delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao last month at the annual parliamentary session.

China's CPI ended nine months of decline in November last year, when it rose 0.6 percent, as the nation's economy rebounded strongly.