Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) accelerated in October to 6% year-on-year, Statistics South Africa said on Wednesday.
“The official inflation rate [i.e. the percentage change in the CPI for all urban areas in October 2011 compared with that in October 2010] was 6% at October 2011,” the agency reported.
A Bloomberg consensus of economists expected CPI to have grown to 5.9% last month compared with the same month last year.
CPI was 5.7% year on year in September.
October’s CPI was the highest it had been since January last year when it was 6.2%.
Earlier this month, the South African Reserve Bank said it expected its inflation target of between 3% and 6% to be breached in the final quarter of 2011.
It predicted that the inflation rate would peak around 6.3% in the first quarter of 2012 before declining gradually to within the target range in the final quarter of 2012.
It would reach a level of 5.2% in the final quarter of 2013, the central bank predicted. — Sapa