SHANGHAI - China's Consumer Price Index (CPI) may rise 5.2 percent in March year-on-year, said a survey released Tuesday by Xinhua08, a financial trading system established by Xinhua News Agency.

The forecast was calculated according to the estimations of research institutions and economists, who responded to the survey and expected the March CPI data to increase between 5.1 percent and 5.5 percent over the same month last year.

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The survey did not specify the number of respondents.

The carryover effect would raise 0.72 percentage points in March from February, said Lian Ping, chief economist with the Bank of Communications.

Based on data from the Ministry of Commerce, Lian forecast that food prices in March would probably rise 0.5 percentage points to 1 percent from February, and non-food price hike would reach 2 percent in March.

He said China would face rising inflationary pressure due to imported inflation pressures such as an international oil price hike and increased labor costs in the context of a still loose monetary environment.

However, he said China's CPI would be around 5 percent in the first half of the year and decrease in the second half.

The National Bureau of Statistics is expected to release economic data for both March and the first quarter on Friday.

The Chinese government has put price stability at the top of the agenda of this year's economic work and announced a series of measures to tame inflation. These measures included hiking interest rates twice, raising the reserve requirement ratio for banks three times and clamping down on price speculation and hoarders.