China's consumer inflation surged to 8.5 percent year-on-year in April, highlighting the difficulty of realizing the government's annual target of 4.8 percent.

The April reading was up from March's 8.3 percent but only slightly lower than February's 12-year record high of 8.7 percent. The inflation rate for the first four months of 2008 stood at 8.2 percent.

It will be difficult for China to keep inflation at less than 4.8 percent this year, the target Premier Wen Jiabao announced in March, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Chief Economist Yao Jingyuan said at a forum on Sunday.