BEIJING -- China's producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, went down 2.9 percent year-on-year in August, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Wednesday.

The decline narrowed by 0.7 percentage points from the previous month, marking the first such narrowing since March this year and suggesting an improvement in industrial demand amid government efforts to bolster economic growth.

On a monthly basis, the PPI broke its downward trend to hold steady in August after a 0.2 percent decrease in July.

For the first eight months of the year, the PPI was down 2.9 percent compared to the same period in 2024.