South Africa - Consumer Price Index (CPI)

For South Africa, the CPI shows how the average price level of all those goods and services (a fixed basket of goods and services) bought by a typical consumer or household changes over time. The consumer goods and services data is classified by the International Trade Classification and the COICOP (SNA 1993) classifications.

There are four main consumer price indexes: Consumer Price Index (Full CPI basket), Core CPI (excluding fresh and frozen meat and fish, vegetables, fruit and nuts; interest rates on mortgage bonds; changes in VAT; and assessment rates), CPIX (excluding interest rates on mortgage bonds), and CPI excluding VAT.

The national CPI is reported for "total country" and "all urban areas." The province-level CPI is reported only for the all-items and food indexes.

Active:

• Classification: COICOP
• Measurement: Fixed-base index relative to December 2024 (Index Dec2024=100)
• Adjustment: Not seasonally adjusted (NSA)
• Native frequency: Monthly
• Start dates:
  • Most at 2008m1
  • 2012m12
  • 2024m12
• Geo coverage:
  • Country
  • Province (all 9x IZAF_^^)
• All concept-geo pairs exist: No. Province-level data are reported only for the all-items and food index; otherwise, components are reported only for the country.

Predecessor(s):

• Dec2021=100 - 2008m1 to 2024m12 (archive specifier "_21")
• Dec2016=100 - 2008m1 to 2021m12 ("_16")
• 2012=100 - 2008m1 to 2016m12 ("_12")
• 2008=100 - 2008 to 2012 ("08")
• 2000=100, SA - 1998 to 2005 ("00")

Global concept alias(es):

• CPI

The index base period is December 2016 = 100. The current basket includes 412 products and serivces. This is an increase from the previous basket which consisted of 396 products and services. The basket serves as a basis for how the monthly CPI is calculated.

There are two data collection groupings. The first is the field collection which collects prices of commodities, taxi fares, rentals, and restaurants at a monthly frequency. This group uses persons employed in taking part of the survey to collect the data. The second group is the head office collection which collects prices of commodities and services. The collection methods used are postal, e-mail, fax, telephonic, and the internet.

Prices are collected for different types of areas including urban and rural areas. The CPI collects and publishes for all areas in which prices are collected. The reported geographies include the total country, all urban areas, and the nine provinces.

Each product included in the basket carries a weight that is determined by the proportion of household spending. Each weight controls the corresponding product's relative importance. The CPI uses a plutocratic weighting scheme that reflects the total expenditures of all reference households and estimated total values of the reference population. The Income and Expenditure Survey (IES) is used to derive the levels of expenditure for households during a certain time frame. A full list of the 2016 weights are available on the source's website.

Moody's Analytics supplements

For the general index, we have back-extended to 1957m1 (using the predecessor and IMF), and constructed a seasonally adjusted counterpart.

Yes.

The weights are updated at five-year intervals and are linked to the availablility to the IES data.

Further reading

At the source:

• Statistical release P0141
• Sources and methods (Feb 2013)
• Presentation on CPI weights and basket (Jan 2022)
• Update of the CPI weights and basket January 2022 (Jan 2022)
• CPI basket and weights update (Jan 2025)

At IMF (SDDS):

• Price index: Consumer prices (Jan 2025)

• Sep 2005 - Initial version.
• Mar 2009 - Rebased to 2008.
• Jan 2012 - Addendum of SA supplement.
• Jan 2013 - Rebased to 2012.
• Apr 2015 - Addendum of "all urban areas" and components thereof.
• Mar 2017 - Rebased to 2016.
• Mar 2022 - Rebased to 2021.
• 21 Mar 2025, Phillip Thorne - Rebased to 2024: Properties, Further reading.