China's CPI up 3.3% year-on-year in April, says NBS

China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, rose 3.3 percent year-on-year last month, down from 4.3 percent for the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.

The ease in inflationary pressure mainly resulted from an increased food supply as the order of production further recovered from the COVID-19 shock, said Dong Lijuan, a senior NBS statistician.

Food prices increased by 14.8 percent year-on-year in April, down by 3.5 percentage points from March. Pork prices almost doubled from a year earlier and contributed more than 70 percent of the growth in CPI last month, but the surge has eased by 19.5 percentage points from the previous month, the bureau reported.

The core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, went up 1.1 percent year-on-year last month, edging down from the 1.2 percent for March.

Meanwhile, the producer price index, which gauges factory gate prices, declined 3.1 percent year-on-year in April, affected by the continued price decline in bulk commodities in the international markets amid the COVID-19 pandemic.