A staff member works at an engineering machinery company in Kaiping District of Tangshan, north China's Hebei Province, Nov. 17, 2019. (File photo: Xinhua)

BEIJING, April 10 (Xinhua) -- China's producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, dropped 1.5 percent year on year in March, compared with a 0.4-percent decline in February, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday.

On a month-on-month basis, the PPI fell 1 percent last month.

In the first quarter of 2020, the PPI on average inched down 0.6 percent from the same period of last year.

Factory prices of capital goods decreased 2.4 percent year on year in March, widening from a 1-percent decline in February.