China's CPI stays mostly flat in March

China's factory-gate prices rose at the slowest rate in 11 months in March, official data showed on Monday, amid rising commodity prices, a complicated external environment, and the resurgence of domestic COVID-19 cases.

China's producer price index, which gauges factory-gate prices, rose 8.3 percent year-on-year in March, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement, easing from 8.8 percent in the previous month.

The carryover effect of last year's prices changes contributed around 6.8 percentage points to the PPI growth, while new price increases contributed around 1.5 percentage points, NBS data showed.

On a monthly basis, the PPI grew by 1.1 percent in March, compared with the 0.5 percent increase in February.

China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, rose by 1.5 percent year-on-year in March, up from 0.9 percent a month ago, NBS said.

While pork prices dropped 41.4 percent year-on-year in March, fresh vegetable prices surged 17.2 percent.Prices of industrial consumer goods rose 3.5 percent year-on-year, up from 3.1 percent in the previous month, according to NBS.

On a month-on-month basis, CPI grew by 0.6 percent in March, flat with a month ago.

The growth in core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices and is deemed a better gauge of the supply-demand relationship, came in at 1.1 percent in March, flat with the previous month.

Dong Lijuan, a senior NBS statistician, attributed the accelerated growth of consumer inflation to the sporadic COVID-19 cases at home and price hikes in international commodities, saying the month-on-month growth in PPI is affected by rising prices in global commodities, such as oil and nonferrous metals.