In February, the CPI increased by 0.42%

That was announced by the General Statistics Office (GSO) on February 24 in information about the consumer price index (CPI) for February 2016.

According to the General Statistics Office, February 2016 was the Lunar New Year month but the CPI only increased by 0.42% compared to the previous month.

The first reason for the CPI increase mentioned by the General Statistics Office is that the food price index increased by 0.66% due to increased consumer demand. In addition, traders are collecting rice for rice export contracts to Indonesia and the Philippines.

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Fresh food items increased quite high during Tet due to the high demand for food for Tet such as pork, beef, fresh seafood with an increase of 0.2% - 0.4%. In particular, the price of green vegetables increased in the northern provinces due to limited supply affected by the cold weather before Tet.

Notably, public transport service prices increased by 3.45% due to some units declaring to increase prices for busy routes (from 20% - 60% compared to normal ticket prices) to offset the cost of vehicles running during the low-traffic days during Tet.

In addition, this is also the month when many localities implement a roadmap to increase tuition fees at all levels, causing the education group price index to increase by 0.26%.

With the above factors, the CPI for the Lunar New Year would have increased quite strongly. However, according to the General Statistics Office, there are also many factors that reduce the CPI such as the price of gasoline decreased by 1,320 VND/liter, diesel oil decreased by 1,530 VND/liter, causing the fuel price index to decrease by 8.81% compared to January and contributing to a decrease in the overall CPI of about 0.39%...

CPI in February therefore increased by only 0.42%.

According to tuoitre.vn