China PPI down 0.7% in April

BEIJING - China's Producer Price Index (PPI), a main gauge of inflation at the wholesale level, fell 0.7 percent in April from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Friday.

The data marked another month of year-on-year decline after China's PPI saw a drop in March for the first time since December 2009, NBS data showed.

On a month-on-month basis, the country's PPI in April grew 0.2 percent, the NBS said in a statement on its website.

In April, producer purchase prices went down 0.8 percent year-on-year and stayed flat on a monthly basis, the NBS said.

In the first four months of this year, the PPI edged down 0.1 percent year-on-year, while producer purchase prices gained 0.6 percent, it said.

The NBS also announced Friday that the consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, rose 3.4 percent from a year earlier in April.