China's producer price index (PPI) fell for the third straight month, dropping 4.5 percent year on year in February, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.

The decline in the PPI, a major measure of inflation at the wholesale level, was 1.2 percentage points higher than the month-earlier level.

Prices of production materials dropped 5.7 percent from a year ago, with those of mineral industry, primary industry and processing industry down 17.4 percent, 8.4 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

Living materials prices dipped 0.4 percent, with clothing and commodities prices up 0.6 percent and prices of food and consumer durable goods down 0.7 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively, said NBS.

Factory gate crude oil prices sank 56.3 percent, with prices of gasoline, kerosene and diesel down 0.5 percent, 26.4 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively.

Factory gate prices of coal mining went up 18.8 percent, and raw coal prices up 18.7 percent.

China's PPI fell by 3.9 percent in the first two months this year, compared with the same period last year, said NBS.

NBS also revealed on Tuesday that China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, fell 1.6 percent year on year in February.

It is the first monthly negative growth since December 2002 when CPI was down to minus 0.4 percent.

The fall of the CPI and PPI in February was mainly caused by the significant declines in the international primary products prices and other factors such as the Spring Festival and the severe winter weather which brought up the February CPI last year, said NBS in a statement.

China's PPI had been actually falling at a slower pace compared with the three previous months, as the PPI in February only decreased 0.7 percent on a month-on-month basis, said the NBS statement.

China's PPI fell 2.7 percent and 1.6 percent in November and December last year, month on month, and the decreasing rate in January was 0.7 percent, said the statement.

(Xinhua News Agency March 10, 2009)