Consumer prices up 7.9% in July

Good news is electricity, gas and water prices went down mainly due to the Government's electricity charge subsidy.

The Census and Statistics Department said overall consumer prices rose by 7.9% in July 2011 over the same month in 2010, larger than the corresponding increase (5.6%) in June 2011. This is according to the Composite Consumer Price Index.

“The larger year-on-year rate of change in the Composite CPI in July was mainly due to the low base of comparison resulted from the Government's payment of public housing rentals in July last year. Netting out the effects of all Government's one-off relief measures, the year-on-year rate of increase in the Composite CPI (i.e. the underlying inflation rate) in July 2011 was 5.8%, larger than that in June (5.5%), mainly due to the enlarged increases in private housing rentals, the prices of pork as well as the charges for package tours,” noted the Department.

Year-on-year increases in prices were recorded in July 2011 for alcoholic drinks and tobacco (20.1% in the Composite CPI, mainly due to the increase in tobacco duty by 41.5%); housing (16.4% in the Composite CPI, mainly due to the low base of comparison resulted from the Government's payment of public housing rentals in July last year); food (excluding meals bought away from home) (10.7% in the Composite CPI); clothing and footwear (7.3% in the Composite CPI); meals bought away from home (5.5% in the Composite CPI); transport (4.8% in the Composite CPI); miscellaneous goods (4.1% in the Composite CPI) and miscellaneous services (4.0% in the Composite CPI).

Meanwhile the Government will continue to monitor the movements of particularly global food and commodity prices.