Vietnamese consumer prices rose 26.8 percent this month compared with the same month last year, driven mainly by sharply higher food prices, government statistics showed yesterday.
Prices rose an estimated 2.1 percent between last month and this month, a slowdown from a 3.9 percent rise a month earlier, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said in an early estimate.
Vietnam, which experienced 8.5 percent economic growth last year, has been hit by double-digit inflation since November — a spike that has caused public anger and triggered a series of labor disputes.
Inflation for the first six months of the year has reached 18.4 percent, the GSO said.
The Vietnamese government has made fighting inflation its top priority and has cut its economic growth target this year to 7 percent.
Authorities have also raised interest rates, while reducing public investment and introducing temporary price caps on some goods, in a bid to bring the galloping inflation under control.
The GSO also said Vietnam’s trade deficit has more than tripled to an estimated US$14.8 billion for the first half of this year.
The Ministry of Planning and Investment earlier this month had estimated the trade deficit for the first half at US$16.9 billion, state media reported.
Meanwhile, an official said yesterday that Vietnam could fail to realize its target of attracting 5 million foreign visitors this year because of high inflation.
Vietnam has so far attracted 2.29 million foreign visitors this year, up 8.1 percent year-on-year, said Vu The Binh, director of the Vietnam National Administration’s Travel Department.
“The growth in the first half of this year is much lower than in the same period last year, which saw growth of 18 percent,” Binh said. “The slowdown in the number of foreign visitors can be pinned to several factors, including high inflation.”
Binh said the cost of hotel rooms grew significantly late last year and early this year, adding that prices are now cooling somewhat as the number of foreign visitors is not growing as expected.
The cost of hotel rooms in central Vietnam in the first three months of this year grew between 5 percent and 15 percent from the same period last year, local newspaper Tuoi Tre said.
The cost of three to five-star hotel rooms in Hanoi rose 68 percent, while in Ho Chi Minh City prices have increased by up to 40 percent annually over recent years.
“In this context of inflation, Vietnam may not be able to attract 5 million foreign visitors as targeted,” Binh said.
Last year, Vietnam attracted 4.2 million foreign tourists. Most came from China, Japan and South Korea.
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