The consumer price indices (CPI) in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, the two biggest cities of Vietnam, started to change their courses in June after being pinned down for 3 months in a row.

The HCMC’s CPI in June went up by 0.12 percent, while that in Hanoi increased 0.08 percent in comparison with last month’s figure.

Among 11 groups of products and services in the CPI basket, the group of culture-entertainment-tourism services in both cities had the highest price increase of 0.57 percent and 0.62 percent, respectively, according to the municipal statistics offices.

However, unlike HCMC, in which restaurant and catering services ranked second with 0.33 percent, in Hanoi, the group dominating the second place was housing- electricity-fuel-construction materials with 0.41 percent.

Prices of beverage and cigarette, as well as prices of garment and textiles-headwear-footwear of both Hanoi and HCMC increased slightly.

The prices of household appliances, educational service, and medicines-healthcare services in HCMC remained stable, and the same phenomenon happened to the group of catering service in Hanoi.

Excluding from the CPI basket, in HCMC, the gold price in June slipped by 0.06 percent, while the US dollar price rose slightly by 0.02 percent. In Hanoi, gold price decreased 3.93 percent, while the US dollar price increased by 0.34 percent against May.

In general, HCMC’s CPI went up by 2.78 percent while Hanoi’s index rose 5.43 percent in comparison with that of one year ago.

Given the CPI situation in the two cities, the CPI of Vietnam is expected to increase by under 0.1 percent month on month in June after edging down 0.06 percent last month.

Vietnam’s CPI in May saw a 6.36 percent year-on-year rise and 2.35 percent increase against that by the end of last year.