BEIJING, April. 15 (Xinhua) -- China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.4 percent year on year in March, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced here Thursday.

The figure was 0.7 percentage points lower than the previous month, and for the first quarter, it was up 2.2 percent.

The producer price index (PPI), a major measure of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 5.9 percent in March from a year earlier.

China's PPI went up 5.2 percent year on year in the first quarter, said NBS.