April’s consumer price index down
The consumer price index (CPI) in April decreased by 0.34% month-on-month, but increased by 2.81% year-on-year, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).
In the first four months of this year, the index rose by 3.84% y-o-y, mainly due to increases in prices of education, housing and construction materials, culture, entertainment and tourism, food, and electricity.
In April, seven out of the 11 groups of main consumer goods and services witnessed price decreases, and the remainders saw rises.
Notably, a 0.38% fall in the price of food and catering services caused a decline of 0.13 percentage point of the CPI.
Gold prices in April were up 2.04% m-o-m, but down 1.09% y-o-y. In the January-April period, the prices rose by 0.66% y-o-y.
Meanwhile, the USD price in April fell 0.89% m-o-m, but rose by 2.5% y-o-y, leading to a y-o-y increase of 3.21% in the first four months of this year.
According to the GSO, this month, core inflation increased by 0.13% over the previous month, and by 4.56% over the same period last year. On average, in the first four months, it increased by 4.9% y-o-y, higher than the overall average CPI (3.84%).