An economist at Econometrix, Laura Campbell says fuel contributed significantly to the 4.9% increase in inflation last month.
Statistics South Africa’s figures indicate that the annual Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) was 4.9% last month, up from 4.6% in July 2021.
Campbell says the largest contributions to the increase in inflation were food and non-alcoholic beverages, housing and utilities, transport, and miscellaneous goods and services.
“It was mainly a function of the fuel inflation rate in the month. We’ve seen statistical effects from the hard lockdown now working their way out of the measurement. Now the high inflation rate in fuel represents the strong increases in pump prices to new highs. There was also a rise in the fuel inflation rate to its highest level since the ending of drought conditions in January 2017,” says Campbell.
Head of Wits Business School, Jannie Rossouw reacts to the CPI figures:
