Hong Kong’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) for July rose by 1.6 percent year on year, according to the figures released by the Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) on Tuesday.
According to the Composite CPI, overall consumer prices rose by 1.6 percent in July 2012 over the same month a year earlier, smaller than the corresponding increase (3.7 percent) in June 2012, as affected by the Government’s payment of public housing rentals in July 2012. Netting out the effects of all Government’s one-off relief measures, the year-on-year rate of increase in the Composite CPI (i.e. the underlying inflation rate) in July 2012 was 4.2 percent, also smaller than that in June (4.5 percent), mainly due to the smaller increases in private housing rentals and the decreases in the prices of pork.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the average monthly rate of change in the Composite CPI for the three-month period from May to July 2012 was -0.7 percent, which compared to 0.2 percent for the three-month period from April to June 2012. Netting out the effects of all Government’s one-off relief measures, the average monthly rate of change in the Composite CPI for the three-month period from May to July 2012 was 0.1 percent, and that for the three-month period from April to June 2012 was 0.2 percent.
(Source: Census and Statistics Department, HKSAR)