Inflation eased in March after hitting a 10-month high in February, official data showed Tuesday, but analysts warned of rising inflationary pressures in the coming months. 

China's consumer price index (CPI) rose by 2.1 percent in March from the previous year, 1.1 percentage points lower than the rise in February, according to data released Tuesday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). It was also below market expectations of 2.5 percent growth.

A decline in demand for food after the Spring Festival  holidays which fell in February this year led to a drop in food prices, said Wang Yuwen, a researcher with the Bank of Communications.

Food prices, with a weighting of about one-third in the CPI, dropped 2.9 percent month-on-month, leading to a 0.9 percent decline in March's CPI reading compared with February, the largest month-on-month decline since April 2006.

Pork prices fell 5.5 percent year-on-year in March, because of sufficient pork supply, and not because of the scare caused by dead pigs that were found floating in the Huangpu River in Shanghai, Wang said in a research note. 

The government's call to cut conspicuous consumption also helped to bring down inflation, Lu Ting, a China economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said in a research note sent to the Global Times.

Lu said China's inflation is likely to remain below 3 percent until mid-year but said that markets should be cautious about rising headline inflation levels caused by a potential rise in pork prices due to falling supplies in the second half of 2013 as well as  2014.

Lu also said the role of rising wages needs more attention.  

"Rising food prices are unavoidable in the future as Chinese farmers' relative wages are further increased, so both the markets and policymakers should increase their inflation tolerance level to around 3 percent to 4 percent," Lu wrote.

The recent appearance of H7N9 bird flu, which has caused a drop in poultry and meat sales, will have a limited impact on inflation in the short run due to the effect of substitution with other food such as aquatic products, but the disease could pull down CPI by 0.1 to 0.3 percentage points if the situation worsens, Wang said.

Although bird flu might affect CPI in the short run, it will not change the rise of CPI throughout 2013, she noted.