MANY residents have recently been complaining about fruit prices that have skyrocketed for the past few months, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

Some residents said that their monthly spending on fruit had exceeded 1,000 yuan (US$145). According to the Shenzhen team of the National Bureau of Statistics, the city’s fruit prices increased 0.5 percent in April from March, and grew 3.8 percent from a year earlier.

According to Chinese-language media, litchis, which are widely grown in Guangdong and other southern provinces, were sold for as high as 18 yuan per kilogram at a fruit wholesale market in Nanshan District.

An owner of a fruit stand in the wholesale market surnamed Xie said that the litchi yields in Hainan Province and Gaozhou, Guangdong Province, this year had decreased due to the bad weather. While another stand owner, identified by his surname Zheng, said that the litchi harvest is small this year following a bumper last year.

A manager of a chain fruit store in Longgang District said that the price of watermelon has increased by 2 yuan per kilogram compared to last year. Frequent rainy days also influence the quality of fruit.

The rising fruit prices are the result of the abnormal weather nationwide, the report said. Prices of domestic fruits, including kiwis, apples, bananas, pitayas and litchis, have gone up an average of 20 percent.

Although prices for many kinds of fruit have risen, expensive fruit, such as waxberries grown in Yunnan and peaches from Beijing, have not seen price hikes.

“They are always pricey,” said some fruit stand owners in the Nanshan market. (Wang Jingli)