BEIJING, April 10 -- China's producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, went down 2.5 percent year on year in March, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Thursday.

On a month-on-month basis, the PPI dropped 0.4 percent in March, according to the NBS data.

NBS attributed the decline of PPI to several factors, including the drop in domestic oil prices, seasonal downturn in energy demand, and declining prices of some raw material industries.

For the first quarter of the year, the PPI averaged a 2.3 percent decrease compared to the same period in 2024.

In March, the purchasing price of industrial products dropped by 2.4 percent year on year, the NBS data showed.