Domestic hog prices in March, normally a low season for pork consumption, surged to the highest level since mid-2011.
Higher pork prices are pushing up restaurants' costs, but the impact on consumers' daily lives is limited, shoppers told the Global Times on Wednesday.
As of March 9, the price of live hogs was up 52.8 percent year-on-year, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Saturday.
On Wednesday, live lean hogs were priced at 19.7 yuan ($3.06) per kilogram, up 0.29 yuan from Tuesday, domestic pork prices portal zhujiage.com.cn said.
Han Jinbao, a Shanghai resident, told the Global Times on Wednesday that pork prices have been rising since the start of the year.
"At the beginning of this year, a kilogram of lean pork cost less than 30 yuan. Around the end of February, the price was about 32 yuan. Now it's more than 34 yuan," Han said.
Snow and rain during the Spring Festival holidays affected production and helped drive up prices, according to the NDRC.
Han said the higher prices won't affect her that much. "I still need to eat pork even if it is more expensive," she said.
But for business owners who use large volumes of pork, the price hikes are adding to their costs.
Dai Zhiying who owns a restaurant in Shanghai's Changning district, said that higher pork prices are making things harder for his business.
"Pork is one of the mostly used ingredient in my restaurant. The higher prices are costing me more than 100 yuan each day," he told the Global Times on Wednesday.
The price of pork is also an important component of the consumer price index (CPI), so the rise also pushed up the inflation level in February, according to a statement by the National Bureau of Statistics on March 10.
The CPI was up 2.3 percent in February, compared with 1.8 percent in January.
