Food prices drop seasonally after the holiday season

With the end of the Spring Festival holiday, the prices of agricultural products such as vegetables and meat, which have gained a lot in the early stages, began to fall, while the prices of cooking oil, rice, and flour remained basically stable before and after the holiday season.

The market dynamics released on the 4th in Beijing's Xinfadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market stated that vegetable prices showed a downward trend during the week from January 28 to February 3, and the weighted average price on February 3 fell from January 28th. 9.93%, 17.81% lower than the 1.60 yuan/kg in the same period in 2011.

Liu Tong, head of the market information department at Xinfa Land, believes that due to the declining demand for hot-selling off-season vegetables before the holiday season, prices have dropped significantly. The number of greenhouse vegetables in the north has gradually increased, and the vegetables from the southern region have been listed for long-distance transportation. The volume gradually increased and the price entered a seasonally falling range. The time period for the highest price of vegetables in a year has passed, and the overall price of vegetable prices will continue to fall slowly in the later period.

The price of pork that has risen significantly since mid-January has also begun to decline. According to data from Sogou.com, the average price of pigs slaughtered nationwide fell to 16.95 yuan/kg on February 3, the first time since the end of the year, it fell below the 17 yuan/kg mark.

Sogou.com analysis said that although the demand has dropped and the price of pigs has weakened after the holiday season, the replenishment in the second half of the year was tepid. In addition to the centralized slaughter of the previous year, the pigs currently available for slaughter are still limited, and pigs in the short term are still short-lived. It is unlikely that prices will fall sharply.

On the 4th, the changes in the average price of major foods in the 50 cities issued by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that most food prices rose from January 21 to January 30 in the previous period (January 11 to January 20), with the most significant rise in vegetable prices. Chinese cabbage, rapeseed, celery, and cucumber rose 18.2%, 16.3%, 13.4%, and 14.4%, respectively.

In an interview with the Economic Information Daily, Maung Feng, an analyst at Oriental Agri Consulting Co., Ltd., said that the price trend was basically consistent with the previous forecast. In January, food prices rebounded strongly in recent months, and agricultural prices also rebounded. The sequential increase in the prices of agricultural products and foods is generally lower than the level of the same period in the past two years, which to a certain extent reflects the effectiveness of the central bank’s prudent monetary policy.