China's producer price index (PPI) of manufactured goods rose by 2.7 percent in September from a year earlier, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday.

The growth rate was 0.1 percentage points higher over that of August. Purchasing price of raw materials, fuel and power rose by 3.6 percent from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the PPI of capital goods rose by 2.5 percent, the NBS said in its monthly report released in Beijing Friday.

Analysts said rising producer prices had driven up consumer prices. The country's consumer price index (CPI), a major barometer for inflation, eased slightly to 6.2 percent in September after surging to an 11-year monthly high of 6.5 percent in August.

The PPI of large-sized rolled steel rose by 8.5 percent while that of medium-sized rolled steel rose by 13.1 percent and that of small-sized rolled steel rose by 17.9 percent.

The strong demand in the international market were pulling up the steel prices, and the domestic demand for steel and cement were solidly backed up by the increasing fixed assets investment, according to a report released by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

The price index of food, a major driving force of the country's CPI, ballooned by 8.2 percent, compared with the growth rate of 1.0 percent for garments and 1.9 percent for daily commodities.

The PPI of crude oil, gasoline and diesel went down by 3.9 percent, 5.2 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, while that of kerosene rose by 0.9 percent.

Zhu Zhixin, deputy director of the NDRC, has ruled out the possibility for sweeping price hikes in the future, but predicted that the prices for farm produce, which triggered the drastic rise of CPI and sparked inflation concern, would continue to maintain at a high level.

The CPI would reach 4.3 percent in 2007, exceeding the government-set alarming level of three percent, predicted Wang Xiaoguang, a senior research official with the NDRC.