CPI target for 2019 feasible: experts

Experts have outlined a number of different consumer price index (CPI) scenarios for this year. (Photo vneconomy.vn)

Hanoi (VNA) - The target of keeping the country's inflation below 4 percent is feasible, experts said at a recent seminar held in Hanoi by the Institute of Economics and Finance (IEF) under the Academy of Finance.

Some even forecast CPI growth might be below 3 percent.

Nguyen Duc Do, Deputy Director of the IEF, mentioned the three inflation scenarios outlines since early this year, which will stand at 2.5 percent, 3 percent and 3.54 percent.

“After the General Statistics Office announced the average inflation rate for the first six months of this year at 2.64 percent, there is a high possibility that inflation this year follows the low scenario,” Do said.

IEF Director Nguyen Ba Minh predicted that CPI this year would climb by 3.0 to 3.5 percent.

In the second half of the year, a series of factors would be the key drivers of CPI such as rising food prices, especially pork, due to the impact of African swine fever, Minh said.

“It is likely that the State will continue to increase tuition fees and healthcare service prices along with the set roadmap. The monthly basic salary for civil servants and public employees will also be raised to 1.49 million VND. These will be the factors putting pressure on the CPI at the end of this year,” Minh said.

However, there are also some factors that will curb CPI growth such as the predicted world economic downturn, which would stop the price of raw materials recovering, as well as the Government’s drastic measures to stabilise prices and monetary policies.

Representatives from the Finance Ministry’s Price Management Department were of the view that CPI growth would be somewhere between 3.3 to 3.9 percent this year.

The ministry will continue keeping a close watch on the supply-demand situation to take suitable solutions to stabilise the market, especially in terms of essential goods like pork, construction materials and petrol.

While the fiscal policy must be governed in a strict manner, the monetary policy needed to be flexible and coordinated with other macro-economic policies to keep inflation within the ceiling limit, experts said.-VNA