(Yicai) July 9 -- China's consumer prices rose in June for the first time in five months, mainly due to a jump in the price of industrial consumer goods.

The consumer price index climbed 0.1 percent last month from a year earlier, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics today. On a monthly basis, the CPI inched down 0.1 percent.

The CPI had declined by 0.1 percent in the prior three months and by 0.7 percent in February after increasing by 0.5 percent in January.

The year-on-year increase of the CPI was mainly thanks to a recovery of industrial consumer goods prices, Dong Lijuan, chief statistician of the NBS's urban surveys department.

The drop in industrial consumer goods prices narrowed to 0.5 percent in June from 1 percent a month earlier, reducing the drag on the CPI by around 0.18 percentage point.

The core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose by a 15-month high of 0.7 percent last month after increasing 0.6 percent in May, highlighting the effect of policies to expand domestic demand and boost consumption.

The CPI will likely remain in a low range in the second half of this year, according to a report by Galaxy Securities. Declining pork prices, overall food price stability, oversupply, and expanding weak demand pose major challenges.

Oil prices may face downward pressure, the report said. Irrational, or "rat race," competition has led to sluggish price recovery, and the continued weakness of the producer price index has been transmitted to the CPI, leading to a lack of strong endogenous momentum in domestic consumption and limiting the room for core CPI recovery.

The PPI drop was unchanged at 0.4 percent in June from a month earlier, while the year-on-year drop increased to 3.6 percent from 3.3 percent, according to the NBS.

The main reasons for the decline in PPI are the seasonally sinking prices of some domestic raw material manufacturing industries, the drop in energy prices because of increasing green electricity, and price pressure in some sectors relying heavily on exports, Dong noted.

Future industrial product prices will primarily depend on the effect of unconventional counter-cyclical adjustment policies, with those supporting the real estate market to have the most significant impact, said Wang Qing, chief macro analyst at Golden Credit Rating.

In addition, progress in tariff negotiations between the United States and other countries and the China-US economic and trade dialogues should be monitored because they will play an important role in the international commodity trend and domestic industrial finished product prices, Wang pointed out.

Against the backdrop of persistently low prices, promoting a reasonable price recovery will become an important goal of macroeconomic policy in the second half, Wang stressed, adding that this will be further preparation for fiscal efforts to boost consumption and expand investment and further interest rate cuts by the People's Bank of China.

Editor: Martin Kadiev