Pork tops the list of price increases: Anhui releases the latest CPI rise-and-fall rankings

On August 31, the Anhui Survey Office of the National Bureau of Statistics released the province's CPI rise-and-fall rankings for the first half of the year. Overall, the CPI rose by 1.8% cumulatively, higher than the same period of the previous year. Among the categories, food, tobacco and alcohol; healthcare; and recreation, education, culture and services took the top three spots.

Pork rises the fastest, and fresh vegetables are not far behind

Analysts from the statistics department pointed out that food, tobacco and alcohol once again became the leader in price increases this year. In the first half of the year, food, tobacco and alcohol rose by 4.9%, with pork prices rising the fastest, followed closely by fresh vegetables. "What lets housewives breathe a sigh of relief is that within food, the prices of grain, eggs, and fresh melons and fruits all declined compared with the same period of the previous year."

Healthcare prices ranked second in terms of increase. Affected by pharmaceutical price reform, healthcare prices surged in the second quarter of last year, and the full-year increase ranked first among the eight major categories. This year, affected by the carryover effect, prices continued to rise in the first half of the year.

The pace of price increases for service items slowed. In the first half of the year, service items rose by 1.6%, the lowest increase for the same period in three years, and their degree of impact declined somewhat, but the share of items with price increases still reached 90%. Of the 65 service items surveyed, only 7 declined. Among them, medical services and education showed the most obvious increases, rising by 4.6% and 2.6% respectively, followed by domestic services and personal services such as beauty treatments and hairdressing.

Prices of industrial consumer goods, meanwhile, continued to decline. Among them, housing renovation materials, furniture, and home appliance prices all edged down slightly, while prices of transportation and communication tools, electronic products, and gasoline and diesel declined noticeably.

Housing prices' impact on CPI cannot compare with that of healthcare

Some residents expressed confusion: even eggs have become cheaper, so how can "Brother Pig" still be running so fast? Analysts pointed out that pork prices, affected by the hog production cycle, reached a stage high. Over the past three years, Anhui's hog prices remained persistently sluggish, and the inventories of live hogs and breeding sows repeatedly hit new lows, significantly reducing supply. At the same time, severe weather pushed the increase in fresh vegetable prices to repeated record highs.

Healthcare reform and higher education fees were the main drivers of the rise in service item prices across the province. As one of the pilot provinces for healthcare reform, various medical fee reforms were rolled out successively starting in the second quarter of last year, pushing medical service prices up another notch. Due to the lagged impact of last year's price adjustments and price adjustments after hospital upgrades in some areas this year, medical service prices rose across the board.

In addition, the high prices of education-related services were affected by increases in private primary and secondary school fees and price rises in items such as preschool education, extracurricular tutoring, and professional training. Together, healthcare and education accounted for three-quarters of the rise in service item prices.

As for rent and owner-occupied housing prices, which often play a decisive role in price changes, although the provincial capital Hefei saw relatively high increases since the start of this year, other cities across the province were basically stable or even saw declines, making the overall increase limited, at only 0.5%.

(Source: Hefei Evening News, author: Wu Qi)