China's inflation eased to 3.4 percent last month from 3.6 percent in March, giving the government more space to loosen monetary policies in order to boost industrial manufacturing.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, declined 0.2 percentage points from a year earlier in April to its second-lowest figure in the first four months of the year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)?said in a statement on its website on Friday.

In month-on-month terms, CPI dropped by 0.1 percent mainly because of the 0.9 percent fall in food prices that accounts for about 30 percent of the CPI basket.

Reducing inflationary pressure is expected to leave more space to ease monetary policy, said Liu Ligang, the chief China economist with the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group.

"The People's Bank of China may further cut the reserve requirement ratio to provide more liquidity in the market," Liu said.

Meanwhile, the NBS published the April Producer Price Index for industrial products, which decreased 0.7 percent year-on-year, showing an even more gloomy production situation compared with the reading of -0.3 percent in March.?

chenjia1@chinadaily.com.cn