LANZHOU -- West China's Gansu province will raise its minimum monthly wage by about 13.5 percent in April in a bid to attract more workers and buffer their rising living costs, local authorities said Friday.

The minimum monthly salary for full-time workers will be raised to 860 yuan (140 U.S. dollars) as of April 1, the Gansu provincial bureau of human resources and social security said in a statement.

The bureau said it aims to hike the minimum monthly wage to 1,500 yuan by the end of 2015 to help bridge a widening income gap.

Severe labor shortages, sporadic strikes and rising living costs in cities have prompted wage hikes over the past two years.

China as a whole aims to increase the nationwide minimum monthly wage by 13 percent annually before 2015, according to a central government plan announced on Wednesday.

Twenty-four provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities raised their minimum monthly wage by an average of 22 percent last year, according to Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security.

The southern manufacturing city of Shenzhen led another round of wage hikes this year. It raised its minimum monthly wage by 13.6 percent to 1,500 yuan, the country's highest, starting this month to woo migrant workers from inland regions to help ease labor shortages.