Hong Kong: Hong Kong's inflation accelerated to a 13-month high in February as consumer demand rose and the timing of a Lunar New Year holiday distorted prices.
Prices gained 2.8 per cent after a 1 per cent increase in January, the government said on its website yesterday. That was more than the median estimate of a 2.1 per cent increase in a Bloomberg News survey of 12 economists.
"The larger increase was mainly attributable to the difference in the timing of the Lunar New Year, which occurred in February this year but in January last year, resulting in a surge in the charges for package tours, the prices of fresh vegetables, the costs for meals bought away from home and the prices of poultry in February 2010," the Census and Statistics Department said in a release in Hong Kong.
Rising food prices in mainland China may stoke inflation in the city, Financial Secretary John Tsang said on February 25. Local consumer demand is also adding to inflation pressures after Hong Kong's economy grew in the nine months through December following a year-long recession.
Tsang last month budgeted HK$20.4 billion (Dh9.5 billion) for the financial year starting April 1, including property-rate and public rental waivers, to support growth.
The latest fiscal concessions by the government "would lessen the upward pressure on headline inflation," Joanne Yim, a Hong Kong-based economist at Hang Seng Bank Ltd., said before the inflation report.
The timing of the lunar holiday has distorted the year-on- year comparison, Yim said.
China's inflation accelerated to 2.7 per cent in February from a year earlier, a 16-month high, as food prices gained 6.2 per cent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Hong Kong snapped three months of deflation in September.
- 2.8% rise in Hong Kong prices in February
- 2.7% increase in China's inflation in February
