Vietnam's consumer price index (CPI) in November is estimated to rise as much as 0.6 per cent from October and by 6.9 per cent from last November, reported the General Statistics Office (GSO).
The inflation rate expanded by 6 per cent in the first eleven months of this year, GSO said.
The 0.6 per cent CPI increase this month is far beyond the forecast by the government’s market management group earlier this month, which predicted the rate at 0.3 per cent.
Nguyen Duc Thang, deputy director of the GSO’s Trade, Pricing and Service Department, said that the CPI upsurge this month was due to the sharp increase of 1.2 per cent in prices of food and drink services group, which makes up 42.8 per cent of the basket to calculate the CPI. Especially, the foodstuff prices soared by 3.8 per cent on the month.
Prices of the equipment and service group continued to go up by 1 per cent, the garment, drinks and cigarette group up 0.8 per cent, and household appliance group up 0.7 per cent.
On the contrary, costs of the telecoms and vehicle service group dropped 0.5 per cent, while the construction material group fell 0.2 per cent from last month.
Prices of other groups rose from 0-0.5 per cent.
The consumer price index in urban areas rose 0.6 per cent from October, 6.6 per cent from the beginning of this year and 7.4 per cent from the same period last year. Meanwhile, the rate in rural areas went up 0.6 per cent, 5.6 per cent and 6.5 per cent, respectively.
Among regions, the Central Highlands witnessed the highest rise in CPI, at 1.3 per cent on month, while the Northwestern region saw the lowest rise at 0.2 per cent.
During November, Central Highlands province of Lam Dong registered the fastest CPI growth rate of 1.4 per cent, followed by the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long Province with a rate of 1.1 per cent, the lowest rate was seen at 0.2 per cent in Hanoi, Danang and Binh Dinh.
The price of gold jumped 1.7 per cent from October, 23.2 per cent from last December and 32.4 per cent from last November.
The US dollar inched up 0.2 per cent over last month, 1 per cent from last December and 1.1 per cent from a year earlier, against the Vietnamese currency.
The GSO forecasts that if the Vietnamese Government approves the schedule to raise electricity prices by 8 per cent in early December, the CPI for the entire this year would surpass the CPI targets, set at 7.3 per cent for this year.
(GSO November 2006, VNA)
Vietnamese
