China March PPI falls 1.5% y/y, biggest drop in 5 months; CPI +4.3% y/y

BEIJING, April 10 (Reuters) - China's factory gate prices fell 1.5% March year-on-year, data showed on Friday, marking the sharpest decline in five months and suggesting the economy remains some way off from mounting a durable recovery from the coronavirus shock that shut down the country.

The producer price index reading, published by the National Bureau of Statistics, compared with a median forecast of a 1.1% fall tipped by a Reuters poll of analysts and a 0.4% drop in February. March's downturn was also the sharpest drop since the 1.6% decline in October 2019.

Consumer inflation rose 4.3% in March from a year earlier, the statistics bureau data also showed, compared with a 4.8% rise tipped by a Reuters poll and a 5.2% rise in February. This marked the slowest rate since a 3.8% rise in October 2019. (Reporting by Lusha Zhang and Huizhong Wu; writing by Se Young Lee Editing by Shri Navaratnam)