Consumers Price Index - September Quarter 2020
The Consumers Price Index (CPI) is an indicator or measure of prices changes. It is a fixed weighted average of price relatives and is computed using the Laspeyres price index formula. The current weighting pattern is based on the 2005 Household Expenditure Survey (HES), which was carried out in 2005/06. The HES information was used to select the 'basket', which is the commonly used term for the goods and services prices for the purpose of compiling the CPI.
Key Facts
Quarterly change
In the September 2020 quarter compared with June 2020 quarter, the consumer price index (CPI) increased by 0.92 percent and the Underlying CPI by 2.1 percent.
- Household contents and household maintenance group rose by 3.3 percent driven by increase in prices of Household Appliance (up 37.5 percent) and Furniture and furnishings subgroups (up 3.9 percent).
- Food prices rose by 3.3 percent, influenced by increase in prices of meat (up 9.1 percent), Fish and sea food (up 7.8 percent), Food products (up 6.0 percent), confectionery (up by 2.8 percent) coffee tea and cocoa (up by 2.5 percent each) Mineral water, soft drinks, fruit and vegetable juices (up by 2.3 percent).
- Restaurants and accommodation services prices rose by 2.7 percent, influenced by increase in prices of catering services (up 2.8 percent)
- Clothing and Footwear (up 2.6 percent) followed by Housing and household utilities (up by 1.6 percent), Health (up by 1.1 percent) and Miscellaneous group (up by 0.1 percent)
- All these increases were offset by the fall in the Transport group (fell by 3.5 percent ) followed by Recreation & Culture group (down by 2.8 percent) and Communication (decreasing by 0.3 percent) with cheaper Operation of personal transport equipment, telephone & telefax equipment’s and audio & computer equipment.
Annual change
From the September 2019 quarter to the September 2020 quarter, the CPI inflation rate was 1.6 percent with the Underlying CPI of 3.6 percent.
- Food prices increased by 5.1 per cent
- Alcohol and Tobacco group decreased by 0.01 per cent
- Transport group decreased by 6.1 per cent
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Information about CPI
The Consumer Price Index covers price changes of the basket of goods and services consumed by all households on Rarotonga (the main island).
The base year is 2019. Prices are collected for 199 items and from selected outlets around Rarotonga. Individual prices are combined using weights from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) conducted in 2015/2016. The HIES information was used to select the basket of goods and services.
The inclusion of an underlying measure is a recent improvement and it is published at the same time as the CPI. The underlying measure excludes items of a highly volatile nature, items that are subject to policy changes.
It excludes some items fruits, vegetables, meat and fish, electricity rates, purchases of new and used motor vehicles, petrol and diesel, international airfares and domestic airfares.
The CPI is calculated as chain-linked Jevons indices (change in the geometric average price). At the higher level, indices will be calculated with standard Laspeyres-type aggregation.
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