Annual NZ food price increase remains high at 6.8 percent
Te Whanganui-a-Tara - The annual rate of food price inflation increased between April 2022 and May 2022, Stats NZ says.
Food prices were 6.8 percent higher in May 2022 compared with May 2021, up from an increase of 6.4 percent in April 2022 compared with April 2021.
In May 2022, the annual increase was due to rises across all the broad food categories including:
grocery food prices increased 7.4 percent
restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food prices increased 6.0 percent
fruit and vegetable prices increased 10 percent
meat, poultry, and fish prices increased 7.0 percent
non-alcoholic beverage prices increased 2.7 percent
Grocery food was the largest contributor to this movement, with increasing prices for restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food providing the second largest contribution.
Average prices for grocery food items like yoghurt, milk, and cheese were all notably higher than they were in May 2021, Stats NZ consumer prices manager Katrina Dewbery says.
"The increase in restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food was influenced by rising prices of eat-in lunch/brunch meals at restaurants."
Increase in cost of items like yoghurt drove up monthly increase in food prices.
Monthly, food prices were 0.7 percent higher in May 2022 compared with April 2022.
May 2022, restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food were 1.0 percent higher than in April 2022. This increase followed a 1.4 percent increase between March 2022 and April 2022, which was the largest monthly rise in over 10 years.
After removing regular seasonal impacts, food prices rose 0.8 percent.
“As the seasonally adjusted figure is similar to the headline figure, we can conclude that the price increases for the month did not have seasonal movement as a main factor,” Dewbery says.Annual food price increase remains high at 6.8 percent
Lisa was born in Auckland at the start of the 1970s, living in a small campsite community on the North Shore called Browns Bay. She spent a significant part of her life with her grandparents, often hanging out at the beaches. Lisa has many happy memories from those days at Browns Bay beach, where fish were plentiful on the point and the ocean was rich in seaweed. She played in the water for hours, going home totally “sun-kissed.” “An adorable time to grow up,” Lisa tells me.
Lisa enjoyed many sports; she was a keen tennis player and netballer, playing in the top teams for her age right up until the family moved to Wellington. Lisa was fifteen years old, which unfortunately marked the end of her sporting career. Local teams were well established in Wellington, and her attention was drawn elsewhere.