China's CPI up 0.9% in Jan

China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, rose by 0.9 percent year-on-year in Jan, down from 1.5 percent in the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.

The slower growth of consumer inflation was mainly attributed to the decline of food prices with pork and fresh vegetables prices dropping 41.6 percent and 4.1 percent year-on-year in Jan. Prices of industrial consumer goods rose 2.5 percent year-on-year, down from 2.9 percent in the previous month, according to the NBS.

On a month-on-month basis, the CPI grew by 0.4 percent, compared with a 0.3 percent decrease in Dec.

The growth in core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices and is deemed as a better gauge of the supply-demand relationship in the economy, came in at 1.2 percent in Jan, unchanged from the previous month.

Dong Lijuan, a senior NBS statistician, said consumer prices remained generally stable last month with the help of government measures to ensure market supplies of products vital to people's livelihood, and growth in producer prices slowed down as the prices of some commodities such as coal and steel moved lower last month.

China's producer price index, which gauges factory-gate prices, rose 9.1 percent year-on-year in Jan, down from 10.3 percent in the previous month, the NBS said.

The PPI went down by 0.2 percent on a monthly basis in Jan, compared with the 1.2 percent decrease in Dec.