Shenzhen’s consumer price index (CPI), a primary barometer of inflation, rose by 3.2 percent year on year in November, down 0.4 percent compared with October, the Shenzhen survey office of the National Bureau of Statistics announced Tuesday.
From January to November, the city’s CPI increased by 2.8 percent on average over the same period last year.
“Affected by the fine weather, the cost of food production and transportation in our city has decreased, and the price of food and services has continued to decline,” said Wu Jianming, press spokesman for the survey team.
In month-on-month terms, food prices, non-food prices, service prices and consumer prices fell by 1.2 percent, 0.3 percent, 0.6 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively.
“The price of fresh vegetables has fallen while the prices of livestock and fruit have risen,” Wu said. The price of vegetables dropped by 14.3 percent due to a sufficient supply as there was fine weather in November.
However, there was a relatively short supply of pork as the ban on cross-border transportation of pigs had yet to be lifted, which led to a 1.2-percent rise in pork prices.
Driven by seasonal demand, the prices of beef and mutton were also up by 0.8 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively. The price increases for various kinds of fruit, such as pear, banana, watermelon, durian and pineapple, also pushed the price of fresh fruit up by 3 percent.
“In the non-food commodities, the price of tourism products dropped, while gasoline and diesel prices fell after a rise,” Wu said. As November is the off-season for tourism, the number of tourists decreased, weighing down the tourism package prices by 4.1 percent.
Additionally, influenced by lower international oil prices, gasoline and diesel prices began to fall, ending the month down 4.9 percent and 5.3 percent, respectively.