Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok said Monday that the government will devise measures to boost the competitiveness of the farming industry and revamp its logistics structure as surging prices of fruits and fresh food items have pushed up inflation.
Choi announced the plan during a visit to a major discount chain store in the city of Seongnam, south of Seoul, to check prices of agro and fisheries products amid high inflationary pressure, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
“High prices of farm produce were due to unfavorable weather conditions and structural issues of the industry, and they are actually not one-off factors. We will take the current situation as an opportunity to revamp the distribution structure,” Choi told reporters.
The government will also present measures to enhance competitiveness by supporting disaster prevention facilities and better managing government reserves, and plans to set up orchard complexes with high productivity by using advanced technologies, he added.
Consu
mer prices, a key gauge of inflation, rose back to over 3 percent in a month in February to stand at 3.1 percent on high prices of fruits, vegetables and other fresh food items, as well as high energy costs.
Prices of 18 major kinds of fruit, including apples and pears, combined surged 41.2 percent last month, the largest increase in more than 32 years, according to the data by Statistics Korea.
“If supply-side shocks disappear, inflation is expected to fall to the 2 percent range in the second half of this year,” Choi said.
Inflation has been moderating, but the pace has been slower than earlier expected and is forecast to continue before reaching the target rate of 2 percent by around the end of this year due to high oil and fresh food prices, officials have said.
The government has implemented intensive discount programs and other campaigns recently to lower prices of agricultural products and everyday items by using more than 150 billion won (US$113 million) of the state budget.
Source: Yonhap News
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