Hong Kong Inflation Rose 4 Percent in April

Hong Kong’s overall consumer prices rose by 4 percent in April over the same month in 2012, larger than the corresponding increase of 3.6 percent in March, the city’s Census and Statistics Department announced on Tuesday.

Netting out the effects of all government’s one-off relief measures, the year-on-year rate of increase in the Composite Consumer Price Index (CPI), the underlying inflation rate in April was 3.9 percent, larger than the March level of 3.7 percent, mainly attributable to the increases in the prices of fresh vegetables.

The larger magnitude of widening in the year-on-year rate of increase in the Composite CPI (from 3.6 percent in March to 4 percent in April) as compared with the underlying counterpart ( from 3.7 percent in March to 3.9 percent in April) was largely due to the lower ceiling of rates concession, from 2,500 HK dollars ( about 322.17 U.S. dollars) per quarter for each ratable property to 1,500 HK dollars starting from April.

A government spokesman expected inflation to rise slightly in the coming months as the lagged effects of the rise in private housing rentals during 2012 feed through. Nonetheless, imported inflation stayed tame and the recent softening in housing rentals should help contain the upward pressure on inflation in the latter part of this year.

via Xinhua

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza