China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, increased 2 percent year on year in February, down from 2.5 percent in January, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) unveiled on Sunday.

Inflation rose 2.1 percent in cities and 1.7 percent in rural areas from the same period of last year, the NBS data showed.

Food prices, which account for nearly one-third of the weighting in the calculation of China's CPI, rose 2.7 percent year on year. Prices of non-food products climbed 1.6 percent from a year ago.

On a month-to-month basis, CPI edged up 0.5 percent last month from January, while food prices rose 1.7 percent and prices of non-food remained flat.

The eased inflation, in line with the market expectation, was mainly attributed to shrinking food demand after the the Chinese New Year holidays.

The NBS data also said China's producer price index, which measures inflation at the wholesale level, contracted 2 percent year on year in February after a 1.6-percent decline in January.

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