BEIJING — China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 5.4 percent year-on-year in January, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Feb 10.

The increase was up from 4.5 percent for December.

Food prices grew 20.6 percent year-on-year last month, up from 17.4 percent in December, while non-food prices gained 1.6 percent, 0.3 percentage points higher than that of December.

Pork prices rose 116 percent year-on-year last month, while vegetable prices saw a 17.1 percent increase from a year ago.

The CPI in urban and rural areas posted a year-on-year growth of 5.1 percent and 6.3 percent, respectively.

The CPI of Hubei province rose 5.5 percent year-on-year in January, generally in line with the growth of the country's CPI, reflecting a positive effect of the government's efforts on securing supply and stabilizing prices, said Dong.

The data on Feb 10 also showed that China's producer price index, which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, rose 0.1 percent year-on-year in January.