BEIJING -- China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.6 percent year-on-year in August, down from 2.7 percent in July, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday.

The country's consumer inflation has stayed between 2 percent and 3.2 percent this year, well below the government's full-year target of 3.5 percent.

Last month, food prices rose 4.7 percent year-on-year, while prices of non-food products were up 1.5 percent, the NBS said in a statement on its website.

Niu Li, an expert with the State Information Center, attributed the slight drop mainly to a weakening carryover effect, as last August's inflation was slightly higher than that of July.

The bureau estimated that the carryover effect dropped 0.7 percentage points from July to 1.1 percent in August.

The data also showed China's producer price index, which measures inflation at the wholesale level, fell 1.6 percent in August from the same month last year.

China's economy has been stuck in a protracted weak recovery, easing to 7.5-percent growth in the second quarter of 2013 from 7.7 percent in the first three months and 7.9 percent in the final quarter of 2012.