China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.7 percent year on year in February, the National Bureau of Statistics announced Thursday.

Food prices rose 6.2 percent last month year on year, with non-food prices rising 1 percent from a year earlier.

The figure was 1.2 percentage points higher than January's figure, partly due to the Lunar New Year holiday falling in February this year, a time when Chinese spend a lot of money on food, alcohol, cigarettes and gifts.

China's CPI ended nine months of decline in November last year, when it rose 0.6 percent. In December it rose 1.9 percent, as freezing weather helped push up food prices.

The producer price index (PPI), a major measure of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 5.4 percent in February from a year earlier, up from January's 4.3 percent.

It ended 12 months of decline in December last year, up 1.7 percent.

(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2010)