BEIJING - China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, was down 0.1 percent year-on-year in March, the National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday.

This figure represents an improvement compared to the 0.7-percent decline recorded in February. The bureau attributed the improvement to the impact of policies designed to boost consumption, which are starting to take effect.

The bureau's statistician Dong Lijuan highlighted the core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 0.5 percent from a year ago in March, a significant recovery from the 0.1-percent drop in February.

The prices in urban areas and rural areas decreased by 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent year-on-year, respectively, the bureau's data showed.

Breaking down the data, food prices dropped 1.4 percent year-on-year, primarily due to an ample food supply. Non-food prices saw a modest increase of 0.2 percent year-on-year.

Consumer goods prices decreased 0.4 percent year-on-year and service prices gained 0.3 percent year-on-year last month, according to the data.

From January to March, on average, the national consumer prices decreased 0.1 percent over the same period last year.

On a monthly basis, the CPI dropped 0.4 percent in March, the bureau's data showed.

The official data also indicated that the producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, went down 2.5 percent year-on-year.

On a month-on-month basis, the PPI dropped 0.4 percent in March, according to the data.

The bureau attributed the decline of PPI to several factors, including the drop in domestic oil prices, seasonal downturn in energy demand, and declining prices of some raw material industries.

For the first quarter of the year, the PPI averaged a 2.3 percent decrease compared to the same period in 2024.

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In March, the purchasing price of industrial products dropped by 2.4 percent year-on-year, according to the data.