A customer shops at a supermarket in Qingzhou, east China's Shandong Province, March 9, 2024. (Photo by Wang Jilin/Xinhua)

BEIJING, April 11-- China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, edged up 0.1 percent year on year in March, official data showed Thursday.

On a monthly basis, the CPI went down 1 percent in March, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The core CPI, deducting food and energy prices, went up 0.6 percent year on year last month, maintaining a mild increase, according to the NBS.