Vietnam's consumer price index (CPI) is estimated to increase by 2.8 per cent in the first quarter of this year, much lower than the rate of 3.7 per cent a year earlier, the government’s General Statistics Office (GSO) said on Wednesday.
The rate is also lower than the forecast by the Ministry of Trade at 3.3-3.5 per cent.
In January-March, the prices of food and foodstuff, which accounts for 47 per cent of the basket of commodities used in calculating the CPI, registered highest growth of 8.9 per cent from the end of last year. Of which, the price of foodstuff was up 9.7 per cent, while food (mainly rice) increased 7 per cent.
Costs of transport and postal services also saw strong rise of 8.6 per cent from beginning of 2006, followed by garments and footwear with increase of 6 per cent.
Prices of home appliances and pharmaceutical products and health care services have same increase of 5.4 per cent, while prices of educational services were up 5.1 per cent and beverages and cigarettes up 4.7 per cent.
Costs of cultural-sport-recreational services ticked up slightly 2.6 per cent while prices of housing-construction materials up only 0.5 per cent.
In March alone, CPI is calculated to fall by 0.5 per cent against last month and rose by 7.5 per cent against last year, the GSO reported.
Prices of food and foodstuff fell sharply by 0.9 per cent from February, followed by prices of cultural-sport-recreational services by 0.7 per cent and transport and postal services, by 0.6 per cent.
Meanwhile, the highest increase rates were seen in prices of pharmaceutical products and health care services with rise of 0.5 per cent, and in home-appliances with rise of 0.4 per cent.
The central coastal region saw the strongest CPI fall at 0.8 per cent on-month, followed by the Red River Delta region with decrease of 0.5 per cent. The northwest saw the highest CPI rise of 0.3 per cent.
Among localities nationwide, the central provinces of Thua Thien-Hue and Binh Dinh recorded sharpest CPI drop of 1.3 per cent, followed by Ho Chi Minh City with 1.2 per cent and Hanoi with 1 per cent. Haiphong posted the highest CPI rise of 0.6 per cent.
The price of gold in March surged by 1.8 per cent against February, by 11.6 per cent from the end of 2005 and by 26.7 per cent over the same period last year.
The US dollar slid down 0.1 per cent against the Vietnamese currency in the month and stepped up by 0.8 per cent from a year earlier.
Vietnam’s government targets to curb the index below the GDP growth rate, which is set at 8 per cent this year.
According to the central bank’s Governor Le Duc Thuy, the CPI rate would be around 6 per cent in 2006.
Vietnam’s CPI rose by 8.4 per cent last year, going far beyond the initial target of 6.5 per cent. The rate is slightly lower than the economic growth rate, which stood at 8.5 per cent.
T.V
Vietnamese
