{"id":791585,"date":"2024-09-18T10:25:56","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T08:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=791585"},"modified":"2024-09-18T10:26:01","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T08:26:01","slug":"bad-to-worse-for-coffee-prices-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/791585\/bad-to-worse-for-coffee-prices-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad to worse for coffee prices in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Consumer inflation may have dropped for the third straight month, but coffee prices have continued to climb, with inflation hitting a 19-month high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consumer inflation dropped for a third month, falling from 4.6% in July to 4.4% in August\u2014the lowest level since April 2021 and below the South African Reserve Bank’s target of 4.5%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stats SA said that lower annual rates were recorded for several product groups, most notably transport, housing, and restaurants & hotels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, inflation for food & non-alcoholic beverages (NAB) and alcoholic beverages & tobacco edged higher in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Annual food & NAB inflation increased, rising from 4.5% in July to 4.7% in August. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most product groups registered higher annual rates, including bread & cereals; meat; fish; milk, eggs & cheese; oils & fats and vegetables. Lower rates were, however, recorded for fruit, sugar, sweets & desserts, and both hot and cold beverages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, hot beverage inflation continued to burn. Although the annual print dropped from 17.6% in July to 17.5% in August, it still had the highest rate of all food and NAB categories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instant coffee inflation hit a 19-month high of 22.3%<\/strong>. The average price for 250 grams of instant coffee was R67.37 in August 2024, up from R52.71 in August 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The increase in coffee prices<\/a> is due to a decline in the size of coffee harvests and underlying stocks in the main producer countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, annual bread and cereals inflation rose for the third straight month, with the rise (up 17.3%), pizza and pies (up 10.9%) and hot breakfast cereals (up 7.9%) rising substantially. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The monthly rise in bread & cereals was 0.4%, with notable increases recorded for grain-based products such as bread flour (up 2.1%), brown bread (up 1.3%) and white bread (up 1.2%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meat index also increased on an annual basis but did see a 0.4% monthly decrease. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several chicken and beef products were cheaper in the month, with decreases seen for fresh whole chicken (down 2.2%), sausage (down 1.7%), chicken giblets (down 1.3%) and beef mince (down 1.3%). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, bacon, beef extract, corned beef, fresh chicken portions, ham and biltong were more expensive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looking more positively <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transport-related products recorded softer annual rates in August, with fuel prices continuing to trend downwards, decline for a third straight month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fuel index dropped by 0.5% month-on-month, slowing the annual rate to 1.8%. The price of 95-octane petrol dropped 15c less per litre in August to R23.11. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Transport\u2019s influence on overall inflation has waned since mid-2022, when it was the biggest factor behind the rise in the cost of living. It accounted for 44% of overall inflation in July that year,” said Stats SA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Fast forward to August 2024, transport accounted for 9%, placing it behind other major contributors such as housing & utilities and food & NAB.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August, housing & utilities accounted for a quarter of the total inflation rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the July CPI results, Stats SA also completed its survey of municipal service charges in August. This showed that the electricity tariffs increased by 0.1% monthly, taking the annual rate to 11.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Read<\/strong>: What needs to happen to get the rand back to R14 to the dollar<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inflation has dropped to its lowest level in over three years, but coffee prices in South Africa continue to see large increases. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":791589,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-791585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791585"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791594,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791585\/revisions\/791594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}