October 16, 2015 12:00pm by David Farrar

Inflation remains low

From the September 2014 quarter to the September 2015 quarter:

The CPI increased 0.4 percent (0.4 percent in the year to the June 2015 quarter).
Cigarettes and tobacco (up 13 percent), newly-built houses excluding land (up 5.5 percent), rentals for housing (up 2.3 percent), and local authority rates (up 5.9 percent) all increased.
Lower petrol prices (down 6.8 percent) were the main downward contributor.
Prices for non-tradable goods and services increased 1.5 percent, which was the smallest annual increase since the December 2001 quarter.
Prices of tradable goods and services decreased 1.2 percent.

This is good as it means families get to keep more of their income, rather than have it soaked up in higher costs.

In the last three years overall prices have gone up only 2.8%.

The tradable sector has actually had prices dropped 2.6% over the last three years while non-tradable has gone up 7.0%.

Labour often go on about power prices. Guess how much electricity has gone up in the last year? 0.07%. Another crisis solved!