Vietnam CPI slightly up in May

HANOI, May 26 (Xinhua): Vietnam's Consumer Price Index (CPI), the country's main gauge of inflation, is expected to go up slightly in May with an increase of 0.2 per cent over the previous month and 4.72 per cent year-on-year, said Vietnam's General Statistics Office (GSO).

Local Tien Phong (Pioneer) online newspaper on Monday quoted a recent report by GSO as saying that by the end of May, Vietnam's CPI is forecast to rise by 1.08 per cent compared to the figure of December 2013.

In May, price of housing, construction material, electricity, water and fuel plans to post the highest increase of 0.43 per cent over April.

According to GSO, in May, hot weather across the country causes the increase in local people's demand of electricity, which results in the sharp hike of the price of this item after three consecutive months of decreasing.

Transportation price is likely to rank the second as increasing 0.36 per cent over the previous month due to the increase in petroleum, gasoline prices, as well as the increase in passenger transport fares during the holiday at the beginning of May, said GSO.

Of the eleven items in CPI's calculation basket during the month, post and telecommunication is the only group to have its price fall at 0.33 per cent over April.

Though not included in CPI's calculation basket, the prices of gold and US dollars continue to decline this month, at 0.85 and 0.04 per cent respectively over the previous month.