{"id":840621,"date":"2025-10-22T10:58:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T08:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=840621"},"modified":"2025-10-22T10:58:34","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T08:58:34","slug":"worst-news-in-7-years-for-meat-lovers-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/840621\/worst-news-in-7-years-for-meat-lovers-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Worst news in 7 years for meat lovers in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Inflation has risen in South Africa, with meat inflation reaching a seven-year high as South Africans spend more at the tills for beef, pork, lamb and chicken. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest data from Stats SA states that annual consumer inflation rose slightly from 3.3% in August to 3.4% in September. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The monthly change in the consumer price index (CPI) was 0.2%, with annual inflation accelerating across several product categories. This includes transport, restaurants & accommodation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, food & non-alcoholic beverages (NAB), alcoholic beverages & tobacco and furnishings, household equipment & routine maintenance recorded lower rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food & NAB showed mixed results over the month, with meat and maize meal inflation remained high while price decreases were recorded for products such as milk, eggs and white rice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meat inflation reached 11.7%, the highest annual rate since January 2018 (13.4%). <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although month-on-month increases for beet products have slowed, price levels have remained high. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stewing beef, for example, recorded an annual rise of 32.2%, even if this showed no monthly change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beef prices have shot up in South Africa as suppliers have struggled with an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other meat categories seeing significant increases are pork and lamb, which Stats SA said rose notably in September. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chicken inflation has also risen, even at a slower rate. IQF (individual quick frozen) chicken climbed from 4.4% in August to 5.0%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, the milk, other dairy products & eggs category remained in deflationary territory for a fourth straight month, with prices on average 1.6% lower than a year ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most varieties of milk were also cheaper. The prices for fresh full-cream milk decreased by an annual 2.1%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Egg prices saw a massive 8.2% decrease, with the cost of 18 eggs dropping to R62.58 in September 2025, down from R69.36 in September 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cheese inflation up, with Gouda rising by 6.4% and cheddar by 6.3% compared to a year ago. The annual rate for cereals grew slightly from 1.5% in August to 1.6%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prices for white rice fell 7.8% compared to a year ago, while maize meal inflation accelerated to 9.5% from 8.2% in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NAB eased from 4.9% to 4.1%, a marked decrease from the 9.5% rate seen in September 2024. Inflation for hot beverages also eased to 9.0% from 10.0% in August, and lower than 15.8% recorded a year ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coffee lovers again saw the largest increase in the category, with prices rising 12.2%. This was well ahead of fizzy drinks in a can (7.8%), black tea (7.1%) and Fizzy drinks in a bottle (-1.3%). <\/p>\n\n\n

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Higher rents and cheaper travel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Outside of food, the September CPI also contains results for the latest quarterly survey of housing rentals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Annual rentals increased by 3.2%, up from 3.0% in June. Townhouse rentals saw the largest annual rise, increasing from 4.1% to 5.4%. Imputed rentals also accelerated to 3.0% from 2.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In positive news, the transport category saw its thirteenth straight month of deflation, with the annual rate at -0.1% in September. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motor vehicles are 1.4% more expensive than a year ago, but passenger transport is 1,9% cheaper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fuel prices also dropped by 0,3% between August and September. The annual rate for fuel was a negative 2.2%.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Inflation ticked higher in September, with meat prices seeing their largest increases since January 2018. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":701303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[1809],"class_list":["post-840621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-stats-sa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840621","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=840621"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840628,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840621\/revisions\/840628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}