China’s consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, increased 2.4 percent year on year in March, up from 2 percent in the previous month, official data showed on Friday.
The acceleration in inflation was mainly attributed to faster growth of food prices, which account for nearly one-third of the weighting in the calculation of China’s CPI.
Food prices gained 4.1 percent and contributed 1.35 percentage points to March’s CPI growth, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Prices of fruit, aquatic products, vegetables and grain went up year on year in March, with fruit prices surging 17.3 percent and those of vegetables jumping 12.9 percent.
Bucking the trend, prices of poultry and meat declined from a year earlier, with the price of pork, China’s staple meat, down 6.7 percent.
Prices of non-food products edged up 1.5 percent in March from a year ago, boosted by prices of utilities including electricity and gas, tours and outings, and rent.
The CPI rose 2.3 percent in the first quarter from the same period last year, said the NBS.
In breakdown, inflation rose 2.5 percent in cities and 2.1 percent in rural areas in March from a year earlier, the bureau’s data showed.