Zhongshan's consumer price index (CPI) increased by 1.8% in the first quarter of 2019, ranking 8th among the 9 Pearl River Delta cities, data from Zhongshan Investigation Team of the National Bureau of Statistics reported.

Among 8 major categories of goods and service, food, tobacco and alcohol prices, daily necessities and service prices, housing prices, other goods and service prices, medical care prices and transportation and communication prices increased by 3.1%, 2.0%, 1.7%, 1.7%, 1.6% and 1.5% respectively. Clothing prices leveled off, while education, culture and entertainment prices dropped by 0.3%.

Food prices rose by 4.6%, an increase of 2.8 percentage points from the first quarter (up by 1.8%). Prices of fresh vegetables, fruits and pork recorded higher growth and became the main contributors to the increase in food prices.

Due to the variations in prices of energy such as petroleum in the international market, gasoline price and diesel price have fallen by 2.3% and 1.7% respectively. Service price has increased by 1.5%, driving the CPI up by 0.55 percentage points.

In addition, Zhongshan's CPI in June went up by 0.3% month-on-month and 2.6% year-on-year. Compared with the same period of last year, fresh fruits prices soared by 36.4%, and pork price increased by 17.6%.