A man eats a takeaway meal on a chair placed outside a restaurant in the Sham Shui Po district of Hong Kong in the early morning of July 29, 2020, as new social distancing measures come into effect which include the banning of dine-in services at restaurants. (ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP)

HONG KONG - Hong Kong's overall consumer prices fell 2.3 percent in July over the same month a year earlier, the Census and Statistics Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government announced on Thursday.

Netting out the effects of the HKSAR government's one-off relief measures, the year-on-year rate of increase in the composite consumer price index (CPI) in July was 0.2 percent, smaller than the 1.2 percent in June

Netting out the effects of the HKSAR government's one-off relief measures, the year-on-year rate of increase in the composite consumer price index (CPI) in July was 0.2 percent, smaller than the 1.2 percent in June.

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The department explained that the smaller increase was mainly due to a drop in the costs for meals bought away from home and enlarged decreases in local transport fares.

A spokesman for the HKSAR government said that the underlying consumer price inflation rate eased notably in July as economic conditions remained very weak amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Looking ahead, both external and internal price pressures should remain subdued in the rest of the year amid the weak global and local economic conditions, the spokesman said.