KEY FACTS
Quarterly change
Comparing the CPI data from the June and September 2024 quarters reveals specific trends in various categories. Here are some notable changes between the quarters:
- The most significant price increase was seen in the Health Group (up by 2.9%)
- Medical Products, Appliances, and Equipment’s (up by 5.38%). Health related expenses, especially medical products rose sharply
- Transport Group increased by 2.4%
- Particularly driven by Operation of Personal Transport Equipment (up by 3.1%) and transport services (up by 3.2%)
- These increases were partly balanced by a 2.6% decline in Household Contents and Maintenance group
Annual change
From September 2023 to September 2024, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 2.6%, while the Underlying CPI rose by 2.9%.
- Transport group grew by 4.4%
- Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco group saw a 2.9% rise,
- Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverage group increased by 2.8%, driven by:
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.
