China's consumer price index, a primary barometer of inflation, in May rose for the third consecutive month to 2.7 percent year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Wednesday.

The figure is a 15-month high, an increase on April's 2.5 percent, and comes after tighter supplies of fruit, pork and vegetables drove up food prices, the NBS said.

Fresh fruit prices rose by 26.7 percent year-on-year and 10.1 percent month-on-month in May, as bad weather hammered supplies, according to the NBS.

The recent surge in fruit prices should be temporary, as the nation's supply and demand for fruit are generally balanced, according to a Ministry of Commerce statement published June 5.

"CPI is expected to be on an upward trajectory over the whole year. It may peak at around 2.9 percent in September and October, and fall seasonally in November and December," Yang Xiao, a researcher from Kunming, Yunnan province-based Pacific Securities wrote on Tuesday.

The country has set this year's target CPI growth at around three percent, while the average CPI growth during the January-May period was 2.2 percent year-on-year.

The producer price index, which measures factory-gate prices, was up 0.6 percent year-on-year last month, down from 0.9 percent in April, NBS data showed.

On a month-on-month basis, consumer prices remained unchanged from a month earlier in May, while producer prices edged up by 0.2 percent, the bureau said.