The price of cooking oil in China will see a 10 percent increase in this new round of consumer goods price hikes due to soaring prices of raw materials, according to the Beijing Times.

The price hike is mostly because of a supply shortage of raw materials and an increase in prices of soybean oil in the international market, said a manager with Keery Oils & Grains, identified only by his surname, Shu. Keery Oils & Grains owns some of China's famous cooking oil brands, such as Arawana.

Shu also said that prices of raw materials increased around 1,000 yuan per ton (US$130.72), up more than 10 percent year-on-year.

Statistics from the Beijing Glorious Land Wholesale Market, a specialized edible oil market show that on May 30, the first-grade unpackaged soybean oil was priced at 8,800 yuan per ton, up 3,500 yuan, or 66.04 percent from the same period last year, while the fourth-grade unpackaged soybean oil sold at 8,400 yuan per ton, up 3,300 yuan, or 64.71 percent year on year.

Prices of small-package cooking oil also saw an increase in recent months. Currently, the average wholesale price of a 5-liter container of cooking oil increased by nearly 40 percent compared with a year earlier.

Guchuan Edible Oil, a major cooking oil supplier in Beijing, has decided to raise its 5-liter cooking oil to a price of 43 yuan per bottle, an increase of 10 percent, according to Zhang Yanling, general manager of the company.

Shu also said Arawana has announced the new prices of its cooking oil; the price for a bottle of 5-liter cooking oil, for example, will see a 5 percent increase.

The cost of other food items has been on the rise of late as well.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the price for live pigs in April stood 71.3 percent higher than a month earlier, with pork costing 29.3 percent more. The price of eggs also rose 30.9 percent on average.

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In Beijing, the price of slaughtered pigs shot up by 30 percent in recent days, with egg prices rising to a five-year high.

Wholesale prices of pork in Shanghai topped 16 yuan per kilogram, a 20 percent hike to a 10-year high in less than a month. This price rose even higher in Hangzhou.

The CPI rose by 3.3 percent in March and 3 percent in April, reaching the 3 percent inflation "alarm level" set by the central bank.

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