November 22, 2011

Food prices in China continued to fall in the week ending October 13, which marked the decline for the fourth week running, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said November 15.

The wholesale price of pork dropped 1.9% from the previous week and had accumulatively declined 8.2% since the middle of September. Prices of beef edged down 0.3% while mutton prices rose 1% and chicken prices kept unchanged from a week ago. Prices of eight major aquatic products gained 0.2% on-week.

Average wholesale prices for 18 types of vegetables started to pick up after four-week fall, and increased 0.4% last week.

Retail prices of grain and oils stayed stable last week. Flour and rice prices were flat from the previous week. Retail prices of rapeseed oil edged down 0.1% while soyoil prices gained 0.1% and peanut oil prices maintained the same as a week earlier. Egg prices went down 0.6%.

The consecutive fall of food prices also helped ease inflation pressure. The October CPI growth marked the slowest surge since May this year, softening from 6.1% in September, 6.2% in August, 6.5% in July and 6.4% in June. Food prices, which account for nearly one third of the basket of goods in the nation's CPI calculation, moved up 11.9% in October from a year earlier.