Beijing, Sep 9 (IANS): China's consumer price index (CPI), a key gauge of inflation, rose 2 percent year-on-year in August, accelerating from a 1.8 percent growth in July, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Sunday.

Food prices, which account for nearly one-third of the weighting in the calculation of the country's CPI, climbed 3.4 percent in August from a year earlier, faster than a 2.4 percent increase in July, reported Xinhua citing the NBS.

The producer price index (PPI), which measures inflation at the wholesale level, slumped 3.5 percent year-on-year, compared with a 2.9 percent decline in July, the NBS said.

It marked the sixth straight month of downswing after China's PPI saw a drop in March for the first time since December 2009.

On a month-on-month basis, the CPI grew 0.6 percent in August and the PPI moved down 0.5 percent, according to the NBS.

In August, producer purchase prices shed 4.1 percent year-on-year and 0.5 percent from July, the NBS data showed.