China's CPI flat in September

Shoppers buy fruit at a supermarket in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. [Photo by Jia Minjie/For China Daily]

China's consumer prices remained flat in September while factory-gate prices fell at a slower pace, official data showed on Friday.

China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, remained unchanged from a year earlier, down from a 0.1 percent year-on-year rise in August, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Dong Lijuan, an NBS statistician, said China's CPI stayed flat in September due to the high comparison base in the previous year.

Within the CPI, food prices dipped 3.2 percent year-on-year in September, compared with a 1.7 percent decline in August. Meanwhile, non-food prices posted a rise of 0.7 percent compared to a year earlier after a 0.5 percent growth in August.

Prices for pork - a staple for Chinese dinner tables - decreased by 22 percent in September compared with a year earlier, while fresh vegetable prices dipped by 6.4 percent year-on-year.

On a month-on-month basis, September's CPI surged 0.2 percent after a 0.3 percent rise in August.

The growth in core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices and is deemed a better gauge of the supply-demand relationship in the economy, rose by 0.8 percent year-on-year in September, flat with the reading in August.

Meanwhile, China's producer price index, which gauges factory-gate prices, was down 2.5 percent from a year earlier in September after the 3 percent annual contraction seen in August, the NBS said.

On a month-on-month basis, the PPI rose by 0.4 percent in September after a 0.2 percent rise in August, according to the NBS.

Dong said the year-on-year decline in PPI has narrowed due to factors including improved demand for industrial products and the international oil price spikes.