Customers shop at a supermarket in Anshun city, southwest China's Guizhou province, Dec 9, 2023. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

BEIJING - China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, edged down 0.3 percent year-on-year in December 2023, official data showed Friday.

The decline narrowed from a 0.5-percent year-on-year dip registered in November last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

NBS statistician Dong Lijuan attributed the narrowing decline to the cold wave and stronger consumer demand ahead of the New Year holiday.

The core CPI, deducting food and energy prices, went up 0.6 percent year-on-year last month, maintaining a moderate increase

Food prices fell 3.7 percent year-on-year in December. The price of pork, a staple meat in China, dropped 26.1 percent from a year earlier, and dragged the CPI down by 0.43 percentage points.

Non-food prices rose 0.5 percent year-on-year, lifting the CPI by 0.38 percentage points.

The core CPI, deducting food and energy prices, went up 0.6 percent year-on-year last month, maintaining a moderate increase.

On a monthly basis, the CPI went up 0.1 percent in December from the previous month, reversing a 0.5-percent decline registered in November last year.

In 2023, the country's CPI went up 0.2 percent, said the NBS.

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Staff members assemble a charging pile for new energy vehicles in a factory in Hefei on Oct 13, 2023. (RUAN XUEFENG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

Meanwhile, the producer price index, which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, went down 2.7 percent year-on-year, according to NBS data.

The decrease narrowed from a 3-percent decline in November. On a monthly basis, the December PPI edged down 0.3 percent, the data showed.

On a yearly basis, the PPI in 2023 went down 3 percent from 2022.

Prices of means of production fell 0.3 percent month-on-month, contributing 0.22 percentage points to the overall decline in monthly PPI for December, NBS data showed

"Due to factors such as the fall in international oil prices and weak market demand for some industrial products, the nation's PPI on a monthly basis decreased in December, but the PPI decline narrowed in December year-on-year," said NBS statistician Dong.

Prices of means of production fell 0.3 percent month-on-month, contributing 0.22 percentage points to the overall decline in monthly PPI for December, NBS data showed.

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In terms of producer prices for major industries, prices for the oil and gas extraction industry went down 6.6 percent month-on-month in December, prices for the non-ferrous metal ores mining industry went up 0.1 percent, and prices for the ferrous metal ores mining industry went up 3.2 percent month-on-month, the data showed.

The December PPI for the prices of the textile, clothing, and apparel industries edged down 0.1 percent month-on-month, while that for the agricultural and sideline food processing industry went down 0.7 percent. The manufacturing prices of the vehicles went up 0.2 percent month-on-month, according to the NBS.