BEIJING, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- China's producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, fell 2.1 percent year on year in September, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Thursday.

The decline slightly widened from the 2-percent drop in August, the NBS data showed.

Month on month, the PPI rose 0.1 percent last month.

In the first three quarters, factory-gate prices were down 2 percent on average from the same period last year, according to the NBS data.

The PPI data came along with the release of the consumer price index, which rose 1.7 percent year on year in September, easing from the 2.4-percent rise registered in August.