Leaf vegetable prices rise last week

BEIJING - Prices of leaf vegetables rose last week, while prices of melons and fruit dropped in China, the Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday.

The monitoring of the wholesale price of 18 staple vegetables showed prices of tomatoes, cucumbers and bitter melons retreated 6.9 percent, 4.4 percent and 4.3 percent week-on-week, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

Prices of celery and Chinese cabbages, however, jumped 12.8 percent and 7.1 percent, respectively, due to shrinking supplies, according to the statement.

Egg prices fell 0.5 percent from the previous week and were down 9.3 percent cumulatively from the start of the year. Pork prices declined 0.8 percent week-on-week while the price of peanut oil, a major cooking oil, edged up 0.3 percent.

Meanwhile, the statement said that fish prices climbed 0.9 percent last week.

Food prices have a one-third weighting in the calculation of China's consumer price index (CPI), the major gauge of inflation. The CPI rebounded to 3.6 percent in March, after easing to a 20-month low of 3.2 percent in February.

The National Bureau of Statistics is due to announce April's CPI and other key economic indicators on Friday.