China home-made vehicle prices up 0.15% in March

The price of Chinese home-made vehicles soared 0.15% in March as compared with the previous month, driven by the price increase of the steel products and energy, according to the price supervision report from the price supervision center.

The report showed that home-made vehicle prices in the first quarter expanded 1.05% compared with the end of last year. And the domestically made vehicle prices surged 0.77% in January and 0.13% in February.

In the first quarter, the prices of raw materials, fuels and power supply were up 9.8% from 4.1% in the same period last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday.

Other factors which helped push the vehicle prices up included the rise of labor cost, and the country's tight monetary policy, which also added pressure to the auto makers and increased the thresholds of enterprises to get loans from banks.