China's PPI up 1.7% in Dec.

China's Producer Price Index (PPI), a main gauge of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 1.7 percent in December year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Thursday.

The reading eased further from November's 2.7-percent growth, the NBS said in a statement on its website.

On a month-on-month basis, China's December PPI fell 0.3 percent from November, the NBS said.

Producer purchase prices grew 3.5 percent year-on-year in December and were down 0.4 percent from a month ago, said the NBS.

The full-year PPI climbed 6 percent year-on-year in 2011, while producer purchase prices rose 9.1 percent from a year earlier.