China's consumer price index up 5.2% in Feb

China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, rose 5.2 percent year-on-year in February, edging down from 5.4 percent in the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.

Zhao Maohong, an NBS official, said that the novel coronavirus outbreak has had a complicated impact on prices but the country has been able to maintain generally stable prices as the government has been actively facilitating production resumption and ensuring supplies to stabilize prices.

The food price was the main contributor to CPI growth, rising 21.9 percent year-on-year in February. The surge of food prices was mainly due to the supply disruption and increase of labor cost for distribution as a result of the epidemic, according to the NBS.

The core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 1 percent year-on-year, edging down from 1.5 percent in the previous month.

Meanwhile, China's producer price index declined 0.4 percent year-on-year in February, affected by the sharp drop of prices of crude oil and natural gas in the international markets.