Vietnam's consumer price index (CPI) in October is estimated to increase by 0.2 per cent from September and by 6.7 per cent from a year earlier, reported the General Statistics Office (GSO).
The CPI inflated by 5.4 per cent in the first ten months of this year.
The 0.3 per cent rise in October is lower than the rate of 0.3-0.4 per cent forecast earlier this month by the government’s market management group.
The slow inflation rate is attributed to the declined prices of the construction material and telecoms and vehicle services.
Natural calamities and epidemic diseases pushed the food prices up by 1.3 per cent in October, pushing up the average prices of food and drink services by 0.5 per cent in the month. This group, which makes up 42.8 per cent of the basket to calculate the CPI, saw the prices up 7.9 per cent from a year earlier.
The education group registered the highest rise of 1.6 per cent on month. It rose 4.1 per cent on year.
Costs of the housing and construction materials group are estimated to fall 0.5 per cent on month, meanwhile the prices of transport and postal services group dipped sharply by 1.8 per cent from September. These two groups saw prices up 6.9 per cent and 3.4 per cent on year, respectively.
Other groups witnessed the CPI rise of 0.2-0.6 per cent on month.
During October, central Thua Thien-Hue Province has the fastest CPI growth of 0.3 per cent, while the southern Vinh Long Province sees the CPI decline of 0.3 per cent.
The price of gold fell 3.1 per cent from September. It increased 21.1 per cent from earlier this year and 31.3 per cent over the same period last year.
The US dollar inched up 0.2 per cent over last month, 0.8 per cent from last December and 0.9 per cent from a year earlier, against the Vietnamese currency.
The market management group forecast that the CPI is hard to surpass 7 per cent for the whole year.
(GSO October 2006)
Vietnamese
