Nasty turn for inflation in South Africa
Inflation in South Africa has risen sharply, with fuel and food price increases causing further headaches for South African consumers.
Consumer price inflation jumped from 4.8% in August to 5.4% in September. Stats SA said this brings the rate in line with the level seen in June this year.
The fuel price index increased for a second consecutive month, rising 7.6% between August and September.
“The price of inland 95-octane petrol jumped by R1.71 in September, reaching a 13-month high of R24.54,” Stats SA said.
“The transport category – mainly influenced by fuel – exerted strong upward pressure on the monthly inflation rate. Transport contributed 0.4 of a percentage point to the 0.6% monthly rise in the consumer price index (CPI).”
“After three consecutive months in negative territory, annual fuel inflation jumped from -11.7% in August to 1.5% in September.”
Food pain
Food and non-alcoholic beverages (NAB) also increased slightly from 8.0% in August to 8.1% in September following five months of decline.
Meat prices grew by 0.6% between August and September, which pushed the annual rate up to 3.8, with poultry-related products seeing price movements due to producers culling birds in response to the avian flu outbreak.
Although IQF chicken portions and chicken giblets were slightly cheaper, prices for whole chickens (up 2.2%), fresh chicken portions (up 2.2%) and non-IQF chicken portions (up 1.9%) all increased. Egg prices also rose 0.3% following a 0.4% drop in August.
“Prices for poultry-related products deserve a close watch in the coming months to gauge the impact of the avian flu outbreak,” Stats SA said.
Looking more positively, inflation for bread and cereals dropped from 9.9% in August to 9.2% in September – the fifth month of decline.
Most products in the group saw a decline, such as rice dropping from 19.8% in August to 18.6% in September.
However, increases were recorded for maize meal (11.9%), instant noodles (17.7%) and cakes and tarts (8.4%).
The price index for hot beverages did, however, increase by 3.5% from August to September, with instant coffee (up 4.8%), ground coffee (up 4.6%) and rooibos tea (up 3.7%) all seeing increases.
Other changes
The September figure also includes housing rent data for Q3 2023, which showed that the annual rate for actual rentals dropped from 2.7% in Q2 to 2.6%. The rate for imputed rentals also dropped from 2.9% in Q2 to 2.6% in Q3.
Annual health inflation also jumped from 6.2% in August to 6.5% in September, the highest increase since November 2017. Medical product prices also jumped by 7.5% over the last year.
The image below shows the products that saw the largest price increases in September:
Read: South Africa’s biggest cities face major electricity crunch
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