The increase in producer prices adds to evidence of a stabilization in the world’s second-biggest economy, including central bank data released last week showing an unexpected rise in foreign-exchange reserves. China also announced plans on April 8 to ease risk-management curbs on brokerages in the latest sign that regulators are gradually normalizing policy measures since last summer’s $5 trillion stock-market rout.

“The producer price index number has delivered a signal that the economy is picking up and the consumer-price index is also acceptable as long as it doesn’t accelerate too fast,” said Wu Kan, a fund manager at JK Life Insurance in Shanghai.

-- Bloomberg on April 11