China's factory-gate prices continued to recover in April while consumer inflation picked up moderately, official data showed on Monday.

China's producer price index, which measures factory-gate prices, maintained its expansion streak for a second month, rising 2.8 percent year-on-year, up 2.3 percentage points from March, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The index returned to growth in March, ending 41 consecutive months of decline.

NBS data showed that prices in the non-ferrous metal mining and dressing sector rose 38.9 percent year-on-year in April, while those in the non-ferrous metal smelting and rolling processing sector increased 22.5 percent. Together, the two sectors contributed about 1.58 percentage points to the producer price index's year-on-year growth.

Dong Lijuan, an NBS statistician, said the wider year-on-year increase in the producer price index was mainly due to rising international commodity prices and stronger demand in some domestic industries, including sectors linked to rapidly growing demand for computing power.

Meanwhile, "the domestic market has seen a more orderly competitive environment, with prices in related industries either rising or posting narrower declines, as continued efforts to curb excessive competition have produced further results," Dong said.

On a month-on-month basis, the producer price index rose 1.7 percent in April, up 0.7 percentage points from the previous month.

China's consumer price index, the main gauge of inflation, rose 1.2 percent year-on-year in April, picking up from a 1.0 percent increase in March, according to the NBS.

Notably, prices of industrial consumer goods rose 3.5 percent year-on-year in April, up 1.3 percentage points from the previous month and contributing about 1.06 percentage points to the CPI's year-on-year growth, NBS data showed.

Food prices, however, declined 1.6 percent year-on-year in April, compared with a 0.3 percent increase in March. Pork prices fell 15.2 percent, with the drop 3.7 percentage points larger than in March, subtracting about 0.29 percentage points from the CPI's year-on-year growth.

On a month-on-month basis, the CPI rose 0.3 percent in April, reversing a 0.7 percent decline in March and standing 0.4 percentage points above the seasonal level, NBS data showed. Dong attributed the increase mainly to higher energy and travel service prices.

For the first four months, China's CPI increased 0.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the NBS.