The Information Office of the State Council held a press conference at 10 a.m. on May 15, 2019. Liu Aihua, spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics, answered questions from reporters about the recent rise in the prices of pork, fruit and other commodities related to people's livelihood.
Liu Aihua said that the short-term impact on the prices of fresh vegetables and fruits is not sustainable. From the point of view of food, industrial consumer goods and services, CPI will not rise substantially in the future. Prices are stable and have a solid foundation.
Liu Aihua said consumer prices rose by 2.5% in April, up 0.2 percentage points from last month. Pork prices are one of the reasons why individual varieties have increased year-on-year. Apart from pork, fresh vegetables and fruits are also the factors driving the rise of CPI in April. These three categories of projects have increased by more than 10% year-on-year in the same month. The impact on the overall CPI is probably between 0.2 and 0.4 percentage points. Therefore, mainly because of the impact of food prices, food prices rose by 6.1% year-on-year, up by 2 percentage points over the previous month.
At present, because the short-term impact on fresh vegetables and fruits is not sustained, pork prices have been declining for 25 months since 2015. They have been corrected from last month and just two months ago. This year-on-year increase has a certain recovery. From the perspective of future trends, food is an important factor to consider. In the future, the situation of inflation depends first on food. At present, the supply of grain and oil is relatively adequate and the price is relatively stable, which lays a good foundation for the stability of the overall price. Just now, we have mentioned two factors that led to the increase in April, one is the rise in pork prices, the other is that seasonal fresh vegetables and fruits are more affected by seasonality. Separately, pork prices are recovery. Pork prices continue to decline for more than two years, which does have a negative impact on the enthusiasm of farmers. With the price gradually rising, their enthusiasm to fill the fence will increase accordingly. After a period of time, the scale of pig farming is also relatively large. It should be said that production capacity can make up for the shortage and shortage of supply, and achieve the stabilization of pork prices. From the price of fresh vegetables and fruits, these two varieties are obviously affected by extreme weather seasonal factors. These seasonal short-term shocks are not sustainable, and the price of fresh vegetables and fruits will not continue to rise at a high level. In these respects, food prices are on a stable basis.
Generally speaking, no matter from the point of view of food or industrial consumer goods and services, CPI will not rise substantially in the future, and price stability has a solid foundation.