BEIJING -- China's producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, went down 2.3 percent year-on-year in September, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Wednesday.

The decline narrowed by 0.6 percentage points from the previous month, suggesting an improvement in industrial demand amid government efforts to bolster economic growth.

On a monthly basis, the PPI held steady in September after a 2.9 percent year-on-year decrease in August, the NBS data showed.

For the first nine months of the year, the PPI was down 2.8 percent compared to the same period in 2024.

Wednesday's data also showed that China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, was down 0.3 percent year-on-year in September.?