Overall food prices may have risen 1.2% annually according to Statistics New Zealand’s latest Selected Price Indexes (SPI), but fruit and vegetable prices have still fallen 8.3% in the last 12 months.
Stats NZ released its SPI for the month of September on Friday which found food prices have risen 1.2% in the past twelve months and 0.5% on a monthly basis.
Stats NZ’s SPI features goods that make up about 45% of the quarterly Consumers Price Index which is the official measure of inflation.
Fruit and vegetable prices were up 0.3% in September compared to August but had fallen by 8.3% compared to September 2023. The yearly decline was driven by lower prices for kūmara, potatoes, and onions.
Stats NZ's consumer prices manager Nicola Growden said kūmara, potato, and onion prices were coming down from near-record-high levels in 2023.
In the 12 months to September 2024, kūmara prices fell 57.5%, potato prices fell 27.4% and onion prices fell 43.7%.
“The average price of 1kg of onions was $1.68 in September 2024. This is the cheapest recorded price since 2012,” Growden said.
Higher prices for restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food (up 3.5%) and grocery food (up 2.7%) were behind the 1.2% annual increase in food prices.
The rise in restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food was because of higher prices for takeaway coffees, lunch/brunch and hamburgers.
Higher grocery food prices were due to higher prices for olive oil, butter, and chocolate biscuits.
“The price for a 1-litre bottle of olive oil has increased by about 58% since this time last year, with an average price of $21.56,” Growden said.
Rent prices haven’t budged much from last month’s SPI. Stats NZ said the ‘stock’ measure of rentals was still at a 4.3% annual increase in September and a 0.3% increase compared to August.
The annual ‘stock’ measure of rentals has been at 4.3% since July.
Stats NZ’s ‘flow’ measure of rentals (which is applicable to new tenancies) was down 0.2% on a monthly basis in September and up 1.2% on an annual basis.
Stats NZ found the prices of petrol and diesel had the biggest falls in September SPI. Petrol prices fell 3.2% on a monthly basis and were down 14.9% compared to September last year.
Diesel fell a further 5.8% compared to August 2024 prices and were down 21.4% from September 2023.
In September 2024, domestic air transport prices fell 0.6% while international air transport prices rose slightly by 0.4%.
4 Comments
How elastic is the demand for olive oil?
I.e. when it gets expensive do people just suck it up? Or do they go looking for substitutes?
And are the Stats NZ figures rebalanced as fewer liters of olive oil are bought?
And what about all the other products for which there are cheaper substitutes? e.g. butter / margarine, etc.
The big supermarkets must have this info at their fingertips. Does Stats NZ get it so they can re-weight?
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