March Quarter 2026

KEY FACTS

Quarterly change

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 0.4% in the March quarter 2026 compared with the December quarter 2025.

• The largest increase was in Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco (+4.1%), mainly due to higher prices for Tobacco, Cigarettes, and Spirits.
• Recreation and Culture (+3.9%) also recorded strong growth, driven by higher prices for Electronics and pet supplies.

Other groups recording increases were:

• Clothing and Footwear (+1.8%)
• Restaurants and Hotels (+1.4%)
• Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages (+1.0%)
• Miscellaneous Goods and Services (+0.2%)
• Housing and Household Utilities (+0.1%)

Price decreases were recorded in:

• Household Contents and Maintenance (-2.8%)
• Transport (-2.4%)
• Health (-1.3%)

Overall price increases across several key groups were partly offset by declines in a few categories.

The underlying CPI, which excludes highly volatile prices, also increased by 0.4%, mainly driven by food prices.

Annual change

From March 2025 to March 2026, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 2.0%, while the Underlying CPI rose by 3.0%.

Among the selected categories:

• Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco increased by 4.1%
• Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages rose by 3.1%
• While Transport declined by 1.6% over the year.

The largest annual increase across all divisions was recorded in Clothing and Footwear (+6.9%), followed by Recreation and Culture (+6.0%).

More on Consumers Price Index…

More information on Consumer Price Index (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.