China's consumer price index, a main gauge for inflation, hit a 20-month low in February at 3.2 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday.

The reading, down from 4.5 percent in January, was the first time the inflation rate dropped below 4 percent since Oct 2010.

Food prices rose 6.2 percent, while prices for non-food items rose 1.7 percent. Prices of consumer goods rose 3.9 percent and prices of services were up 1.5 percent in February, the NBS data showed. However, the producer price index, a measurement of inflation at the wholesale level, stayed on par with the reading a year earlier, according to the NBS data.

Premier Wen Jiabao said Monday that China's target this year was to bring the year-round inflation rate down below 4 percent.