Illustrative photo (Source: VNA)Ten out of 11 groups of products and services in the CPIbasket recorded higher prices. The group of housing, electricity, water andconstruction materials posted the highest price increase of 6.02 percent,mostly due to rises in the costs of electricity, gas, and constructionservices.
The prices of restaurant and catering services jumped 1.44percent thanks to high consumption demand for the Lunar New Year festival – thebiggest traditional festival of Vietnamese people.
Moving in the upward trend were groups of transport (1.24percent); beverage and tobacco (0.77 percent); apparel, headwear, and footwear (0.06percent); household equipment (0.04 percent); and other goods and services(0.11 percent). The two groups of medicine and medical services, and education bothgrew by 0.01 percent.
The postal and telecoms services group was the only onerecording a price decline of 0.01 percent.
The Statistics Office also said that the gold price went downby 0.56 percent, while the price of US dollar dropped by 0.27 percent ascompared to January./.
VNA
