HANOI: Vietnam's inflation eased slightly for the third straight month in November, official estimates showed on Thursday, but the country is still battling some of the world's fastest-rising prices.
The country's consumer price index (CPI) rose 19.83 percent year-on-year in November, according to the General Statistics Office.
This is down from 21.59 percent year-on-year in October, and from 22.4 percent in September -- when the rate slowed for the first time in more than a year after a 23 percent peak in August.
Food prices continued to lead the jump, up 28.04 percent in November from a year earlier.
Vietnam, which has this year refocused attention away from economic growth and towards stabilisation, was in September forced to raise its 2011 inflation target to 18 percent, from 15 percent, as prices soar.
"Efforts to control inflation are still very much needed," Pham Chi Lan, an independent economist, told AFP, adding it would take at least two more years of policy efforts to rein in prices.
Since February policy makers have been trying to stabilise an economy beset by multiple challenges including dwindling foreign reserves, a yawning trade deficit, downward pressure on the dong and runaway inflation.
They have repeatedly raised key interest rates, vowed to cut state spending and ordered growth in credit to stay below 20 percent.
Lan said these efforts were not enough, and called for greater controls on public investments, including those by state-owned enterprises -- a key part of the economy despite being widely criticised for their inefficiency.
The communist country has a history of inflationary challenges that have led to a culture of holding dollars and gold, which many Vietnamese see as a safe haven.
Both the International Monetary Fund and Asian Development Bank project a year-average inflation rate of about 19 percent.
Authorities are aiming for 6.0 percent growth this year.
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