Lifestyle

How much more you’re paying for breakfast in South Africa

Staff Writer

 ·21 Dec 2022

It costs 12.4% more to fry up a traditional farmhouse breakfast in South Africa compared to a year ago, as the cost of living continues to rise in the country.

Using the South African Breakfast Index – an index tracking the month-to-month prices of ingredients used to make breakfast in the country – the basket of items needed to make breakfast now totals R399.84 in November 2022, up 12.4% from R355.72 in November 2021.

The South African Breakfast Index is an adaptation of similar indices created abroad. Used by Hard Assets Investor (HAI) in the US and Bloomberg in the UK, it is a price indicator that measures inflation in wholesale food prices.

The prices used in the South African index come from Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) numbers tracked by Statistics South Africa. The reason breakfast is chosen is that it is a common meal that many households in the country would make and is reflective of the real impact of price inflation on daily life.

Stats SA published the latest CPI data for November 2022 on Wednesday (14 December), showing a slight easing in inflation – down to 7.4% from 7.6% the month before.

However, this was not the case for food price inflation which continued an upward climb, rising to 12.5% for the month from 12% in October.

This means that even though inflation appears to be easing, the real-world impact on households will tell a different story.

According to Stats SA, the jump in food prices represents the seventh consecutive month of accelerating price inflation. This rising trend is mainly driven by inflation in bread & cereals, which reached an annual rate of 19.9% in November, up from 19.5% in October. This is notably higher than the modest 2.3% recorded in November 2021.

The average price of a 2.5 kg bag of maize meal was R34.08 in November, up from R33.82 in October and R25.59 12 months ago. On average, the price for a loaf of white bread increased to R18.68 in November from R18.54 in October. A year ago, the price was R15.68.

The annual rate for meat was 10.5% in November, unchanged from 10.5% in October. Bacon and other pork products increased by 6.4% and 1.9%, respectively, between October and November.

Prices of milk, eggs & cheese products rose by 10.9% in the 12 months to November, slightly higher than the rate recorded in October (10.5%). Coffee whitener increased by 4.6% between October and November and full cream long-life milk by 2.4%.

The annual rate of change for the oils & fats index declined for the third consecutive month, decreasing to 24.8% from 25.7% in October. The average price for a 750 ml bottle of sunflower oil was R38.12 in November, lower than the peak of R45.33 recorded in July.

Breakfast Index

It’s within the food basket that the Breakfast Index is rooted.

The November index shows that the overall cost to make breakfast (for however many people the basket could conceivably feed) is R399.84, up 1.1% month-on-month from R395.68 in October 2022.

Year-on-year, the basket is up 12.4% from R355.72 in November 2021.

In line with overall CPI findings, bread is a sizeable contributor to the higher price, up 20% from last year – but it’s actually the instant coffee that has seen the biggest climb at 26%.

Bacon, sausage and milk have all seen significant hikes, up between 12% and 14%, while tomatoes have also increased significantly in price, up 21% from last year.

The basket includes ten items:

• Milk
• Coffee
• Sugar
• Eggs
• Bacon
• Sausage
• Mushrooms
• Tomato
• Margarine
• Bread

The table below outlines the price changes in the basket.

Read: Inflation eases in November – but food prices shoot up even higher