Choe Sang-mok, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs, "Price Stability Expected to Improve from Next Month"

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Choi Sang-mok, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs and Minister of Economy and Finance, said on the 1st, "We expect prices to gradually stabilize downward starting next month."

Before visiting an apple farm in Daegu that day, Deputy Prime Minister Choi told reporters, "If fluctuations in energy and agricultural product prices decrease, we expect the inflation rate to be in the low to mid 2% range in the second half of the year."

The consumer price inflation rate (year-on-year) rose to 3.1% last month due to increases in prices of agricultural products such as apples. This came just one month after achieving a 2% inflation rate in January for the first time in six months, when it was 2.8%.

At the farm, Deputy Prime Minister Choi checked the status of crop management and urged, "Please make every effort in crop management to prevent a recurrence of supply and demand instability like last year," emphasizing that "the government will continue to support the distribution of disaster prevention facilities." The government plans to expand the distribution rate of disaster prevention facilities to 30% by 2030 to secure stable fruit production facilities against the three major disasters: cold damage, typhoons, and heatwaves.

He also visited the Apple Research Center at the National Institute of Horticultural and Herbal Science and stated, "To establish a stable production base in response to climate change, it is necessary to expand smart orchards with significantly improved productivity," emphasizing that "the government plans to create specialized smart orchard complexes centered on future cultivation sites."