KEY FACTS

Quarterly change

In the December 2022 quarter compared with September 2022 quarter, the All Group Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 2.0 percent and the Underlying CPI increased by 0.9 percent.

• Clothing and Footwear Division increased by 6.9 per cent influenced by a 21.3 per cent rise in the index for the Footwear group and a slight increase of 5.1 per cent in the Clothing group
• Food and Non-alcoholic Beverages Division increased by 5.5 per cent, due to higher cost of seafood, meat, vegetables, milk, cheese and eggs.
• Recreation and Culture Division rose by 5.4 per cent
• Household contents and household maintenance Division increased by 4.4%
• Miscellaneous Goods and Services Division increased by 3.1 per cent
• Restaurants & Hotels Division rose by 2.8%,
• Education Division increased by 0.8 per cent

All these increases were narrowed by decreases in the

• Housing Utilities Division (down by 2.8 per cent),
• Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco Division (down to 0.8 per cent). Due to reduced prices for spirits and wine
• Transport Division decreased by 0.5 per cent caused by low air fares

Annual change

From the December 2021 quarter to the December 2022  quarter, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 14.0 percent with the Underlying CPI of 11.1 percent.

• Food prices rose by 23.5 percent, influenced by  price increase in nearly everything in the food groups.
• Transport increased by 11.9 percent. The largest upward contribution came from the passanger transport services and purchase of new motor vehicles
• Alcohol & Tobacco rose by 2.7 percent influenced by price increase of alcohol

More on Consumers Price Index…

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.