April 1st, 2020: Latest market prices in North Korea

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

In the past few days, Daily NK updated their market price index. The latest price data was sourced on March 20th, but posted at least a couple of weeks later. A few quick observations:

In general, rice prices continue to decline, although not by very much. The average rice price went down by 1.4 percent from the previous price observation, on March 7th. This is hardly enough to be truly significant. As I wrote on 38North recently, the price drop may not be caused by an increase in supply only, but also by increasing enforcement of price controls by the government.

Foreign exchange rates have appreciate significantly since before the coronavirus border closure, and continue to climb still. The RMB has, interestingly, appreciate much more than the US dollar. The dollar climbed by 1.4 percent in the last price observation compared with late December last year, while the RMB went up by almost ten percent during the same time period. Between March 7th and March 20th, the USD appreciate by 0.55 percent, and the RMB by 1.2 percent. North Korea thereby goes counter to the international trend, where the dollar has appreciated significantly over the RMB. This makes sense, however, since the border closure has cut the supply of Chinese goods drastically, thereby raising their price. A significant share of trade in these goods occurs in RMB, and it is only logical that the price would go up.

More on this during the weeks to come…