China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 5.3 percent in April from a year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Wednesday.

A customer looks at price tags in a supermarket in Hefei, Anhui province May 11, 2011. China's headline consumer price inflation slowed to 5.3 percent in the year to April from 5.4 percent in March, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on May 11, 2011.

The April figure was down 0.1 percentage points from March's 32-month high of 5.4 percent, according to the NBS.

China's producer price index (PPI), a main gauge of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 6.8 percent in April from a year ago, down 0.5 percentage points from the previous month.

NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun said food prices, which account for nearly a third of the basket of goods in the nation's CPI calculation, surged 11.5 percent year on year. Non-food prices rose 2.7 percent from a year earlier.

Consumer prices rose 5.2 percent in urban areas and 5.8 percent in the rural region, compared with a year earlier, said Sheng.