December Quarter 2025

KEY FACTS

Quarterly change (December 2025 vs September 2025)

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 0.6 per cent in the December quarter 2025 compared with the September quarter 2025.

Price increases were recorded in several key groups:

• Clothing and Footwear rose by 1.8 per cent, driven by higher prices for shoes, other footwear, and garments.
• Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages increased by 1.3 per cent, with price rises across most food subgroups.
• Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco grew by 1.2 per cent.
• Restaurants and Hotels recorded a 0.9 per cent increase.

These increases were partly offset by price declines in:

• Furnishings, Household Equipment and Routine Household Maintenance (–1.1 per cent)
• Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels (–1.0 per cent)

Annual Change (December 2024 vs December 2023)

Over the year to December 2024, the CPI increased by 3.2 per cent, while the Underlying CPI rose by 2.9 per cent, indicating sustained but moderate inflationary pressure.

The main contributors to the annual increase were:

• Transport, up 4.4 per cent
• Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, up 2.9 per cent
• Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages, up 2.8 per cent

Further detail shows:

• Transport services rose sharply by 12.6 per cent, reflecting higher travel costs.
• Vehicle purchases increased by 2.5 per cent, while transport operation costs rose by 5.3 per cent, highlighting the rising cost of vehicle ownership.
• Alcoholic beverages increased by 8.2 per cent, while tobacco rose modestly by 0.9 per cent.
• Food prices increased by 2.9 per cent, indicating steady upward movement over the year.

Overall, the December quarter reflects continued price pressures, particularly in transport and selected consumer goods, although some household-related costs eased during the quarter.

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.