Food Prices Rising Sharply Prior to Lunar New Year

A vendor sells vegetables at a market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Industry experts predict that the vegetable price peak has not yet come. (China Photos/Getty Images)

Epoch Times Staff
January 27, 2011

A new wave of surging domestic food prices is hitting China prior to the Lunar New Year. Soaring prices have sparked consumers’ discontent while authorities attributed them to last year’s price increases in agricultural products and spiraling labor costs.

Egg Prices At Three Year High

The Daily Economic News reported on Jan. 18 that the price of a half kilo of eggs rose to 4.95 yuan (US$0.75) on the sixteenth, hitting a record high since 2008.

According to a report by the national agricultural and sideline products and price quotation system monitoring, the nationwide egg price started a counter-cyclical increase last October and reached the highest point on Nov. 29 since the monitoring was established in 2008. The price then gradually dropped and stabilized until it started rising again on Jan. 10 and set a new high, an increase of 25 percent.

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