South African food price inflation continues upward

Published May 27, 2021

Tridge summary

South Africa's food and non-alcoholic beverages (NAB) price inflation rose to 6.3% year-on-year in April 2021, with a 0.9% increase from March 2021, according to the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP). The inflation was a key contributor to the overall consumer price index (CPI) headline inflation of 4.4%. The highest year-on-year increase was in oil and fats, at 16.7%, due to international price surges and supply shortages. Meat and milk, eggs and cheese also saw significant price increases due to increased production and distribution costs and avian flu outbreaks. In contrast, fruit prices remained stable and some vegetable prices, such as tomatoes, saw significant increases, while prices for potatoes, onions, and pumpkins declined. The BFAP expects high global commodity prices and increased domestic manufacturing and distribution costs to continue driving local inflation in the medium-term.

Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.

Original content

Last month, South African food and non-alcoholic beverages (NAB) price inflation rose 6.3% year-on-year (April 2020-April 2021), the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP) has reported in its “Food Inflation Brief – April 2020”, published this week. In month-on-month (March 2021-April 2021) terms the increase was 0.9%. This, however, was far below the record inflation of 11.8% recorded in October 2016, during the country’s 2015-2016 drought. Food and NAB were the source for 1.1 percentage points of the annual consumer price index (CPI) headline inflation of 4.4%. Food and NAB inflation was the second biggest impetus to overall CPI, after transport, which contributed 1.5 percentage points. (‘Housing & utilities’ came third, adding 0.6 percentage points). Food was subdivided into nine categories for the purposes of price analysis. These were – bread and cereals; fish; fruit; meat; milk, eggs and cheese; oils and fats; sugar, sweets and deserts; vegetables; and ‘other food’. ...

Source: Engineeringnews