Vietnam inflation slips to 10-year low as oil prices drag

04:13 PM @ Friday - 26 December, 2014
Vietnam’s inflation finished 2014 at 4.09 percent, the lowest rate in 10 years, partly due to cheaper petrol costs.

Reflecting a slide in global oil prices that has pushed down inflation around the world and raised concerns about deflation in some countries, Vietnam’s consumer price index (CPI) fell 0.24 percent month-on-month in December, official data showed.

In the basket of 11 groups of goods and services used to calculate the CPI, transport prices slumped 3 percent from November and prices of housing and construction materials dropped 0.4 percent.

Meanwhile, prices of the other groups slightly went up. Food and food service prices rose 0.08 percent month-on-month in December.

Economist Nguyen Minh Phong told Vietnam News Agency that this year’s inflation should have fallen further if the cuts in petrol and transport prices had been truly in line with global oil prices.

The government had expected consumer prices to grow at 5 percent this year.