Recently, the price of edible oil on the mainland has continued to rise, and the price of soybean oil has increased by 50% in six months. Near the Yellow New Year, the prices of various foodstuffs are rising, and people are complaining about their suffering.
According to CCTV Finance, a Shanghai wholesaler said that soybean oil was more than 120 yuan (RMB, the same below) a barrel in the first half of last year, but now it is about 175 yuan a barrel, which is nearly 50% higher than the first half of the year.
The wholesaler said that the price of 175 yuan a barrel is 20 liters of soybean oil in large packages, which are mainly sold to the catering industry; while a box of 4 barrels or 5 liters of soybean oil in small packages is a bit more expensive.
Some consumers said that the recent price of soybean oil is getting higher day by day, and the price of a 5-liter barrel of non-GMO soybean oil has increased by about 10 yuan compared to three months ago.
Edible oil is not only the market price in Zhang, futures prices are also rising, with a cumulative increase of nearly 50% in eight months.
For the rising edible oil prices, some analysts said that, on the one hand, it was due to the gradual recovery of the catering industry and increased demand in the second half of last year; in addition, the expected decline in production in Brazil, Argentina and other major soybean-producing regions led to a rise in foreign soybean futures, which raised the cost of domestic soybean oil; furthermore, the Chinese Communist Party, in retaliation for the U.S. tariff hike on mainland goods, imposed import tariffs on U.S. soybeans, and importers stopped importing soybeans from the U.S., leading to a shortage of soybeans in the mainland market.
In the mainland, soybean oil consumption accounts for about 45% of the total consumption of edible vegetable oil.
And with the arrival of the Yellow New Year, coupled with severe cold across the mainland, food prices are on the rise.
From the data of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for December 2020 released by the National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China on January 11, food prices turned from a decline of 2.4% in November to an increase of 2.8%. Among food products, the prices of fresh vegetables and fresh fruits increased by 8.5% and 3.5% respectively; pork prices turned from a decline of 6.5% in November to an increase of 6.5%, mutton prices turned from flat to an increase of 2.6%, the price of eggs from the previous month fell 1.6% to rise 2.9%.
Especially after January 1 this year, the price of vegetables on the mainland has been increasing almost daily.
The Ministry of Agriculture and rural Affairs of the Communist Party of China monitored the prices of 28 types of vegetables, and its data released for January 2021 (as of January 10) showed that the average wholesale price on the mainland was 5.44 yuan per kilogram, up 10.8% from the same period in the previous January (YoY) and 5.2% from the same period in the previous year (YoY). By species, prices rose compared to the previous month of 25 species, including more than 30% increase in green pepper (36.9%), winter melon (35.6%), cabbage (31.3%).
Mainland food price increases have caused people to cry out. A mainland netizen said, “The epidemic has come to a large wave of people to lose their jobs, there are many people have no income during the epidemic, vegetables, fruits, meat, a substantial increase in prices, still let people live?”
Netizen “cat in the nest” posted on January 10: “Tangshan supermarkets began to grab food and oil, eggs, meat and vegetables have also increased in price.”
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