Vietnam’s consumer price index (CPI) in Dec is estimated to have risen 1.98% from Nov – the highest monthly hike pace over 30 months, driven by higher costs of foods and construction materials, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said.
The index was up 11.75% from a year earlier and 9.19% on average from the beginning of this year, the GSO said in a report issued on December 24. The government-run office applied new calculation method for the country’s full-year CPI.
Ten out of 11 groups of goods and services posted price hikes this month, excluding post and telecom services whose costs dropped 0.02% on-month and 5.9% on-year.
Prices of foods and restaurant services recorded the highest on-month rise of 3.31%, in which foods prices surged 4.67% while foodstuffs were up 3.28% and restaurant services up 1.86%.
Housing and construction materials followed with prices surging by 2.53% on-month and 5.74% on-year. Prices of garments, shoes and hats and beverages and cigarettes, meanwhile, increased 1.8% and 1.3% on-month, respectively.
The GSO report also showed that U.S. dollar has gained 9% against the dong since end-2009 and 2.86% from last month. Gold registered respective increases of 30% and 5.43%.
These figures proved that the Government has failed to curb the inflation as earlier planned. Last year, the National Assembly targeted a 7% increase in CPI this year, which was later revised by the Government up to 8%.
Nguyen Tien Thoa, director of the Price Management Department under the Ministry of Finance, attributed the price hikes to low efficiency of investment capital which made bad impacts on the country’s monetary policy.
Higher costs of imported materials such as petroleum, steel ingot, cement and fertilizer, strong fluctuations of U.S. dollar and gold prices, natural disasters and diseases are among other reasons, Thoa said.
The director also predicted domestic purchasing power to surge 20% and 22% on the occasion of the Lunar New Year holiday, putting a certain pressure on the local prices of essential commodities.
A HCM City-based analyst said the price hikes have put more pressures on the central bank to raise interest rate to stabilize the economy and ease off tensions on the local currency. (GSO Dec 2010)
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