BEIJING, Aug. 9 -- China's producer price index (PPI), which measures inflation at wholesale level, dropped 0.9 percent year on year in July, the National Bureau of Statistics said Saturday.

The PPI had dropped for 29 months in a row by July, but the pace of decline narrowed for four consecutive months, down from 1.1 percent in June, 1.4 percent in May, 2 percent in April and 2.3 percent in March.

Factory prices of production materials went down 1.2 percent in July, contributing 0.92 percentage point to the PPI drop, while factory prices for consumer goods gained 0.3 percent.

In the first seven months, the country's PPI dropped by 1.6 percent year on year, the data showed.