Annual consumer inflation jumps to 5,0% in June 2026 from 4,5% in May 2026

[00:00:00]All right, let's step away from corruption and crime and the courts and tell you about South Africa's inflation rate, which is not great news either.

[00:00:08]Stats SA saying that consumer inflation accelerated to 5% year-on-year in June, up from 4.5% in May. Patrick Kelly is the chief director for price stats at Stats SA. Patrick, good afternoon to you. Thank you very much for for your time today. A bit of a shock number, although in in many ways we expected it because of the situation around the Strait of Hormuz and Iran and all of that.

[00:00:34]>> Yeah, good afternoon, Mandy. Certainly, we're still experiencing the impact of those early petrol fuel price hikes that took place when when that Iran war started.

[00:00:45]And so, not only are we seeing increases in actual fuel prices, which really are at very high levels. So, 30 almost 35% year-on-year for fuel, but we're starting to see that percolate a bit through into the public passenger transport sector. So, for example, we we saw passenger transport going to 12.5% and in particular minibus taxis, which is our most common form of public transport, up 11.5% just over the month. So, that really is starting to push the overall inflation rate to the level that we see today.

[00:01:21]>> I don't really expect you to answer this, but one of the problems we we often have is that with public transport, we see the petrol price go up, and the price of transport goes up. It doesn't come down again when the petrol price comes down. So, is that a concern with inflation remaining high, that it won't come down again?

[00:01:40]>> Yeah, look. I mean, as you [laughter] said, it's difficult to answer what will happen.

[00:01:44]But, certainly, what we generally see is that some some categories we do see prices coming down. So, for example, long-distance buses are very volatile.

[00:01:53]They go up at certain times, come down.

[00:01:56]They were up 8.4% in the last month, uh but others are quite sticky. Um in particular, uh you know, yeah, petrol prices uh do do go up and down.

[00:02:07]Uh we do see in quite a lot of the goods uh that that prices are quite sticky and don't necessarily come down uh once the input costs have dropped.

[00:02:15]>> Uh what what else have been uh contributing factors uh one way or another?

[00:02:20]>> Well, I think we should look on the other side and actually look at food inflation, which was down to 1.6%.

[00:02:26]Uh this is actually the lowest food inflation number that we've had since November 2010.

[00:02:31]Uh so, historically low levels of in of inflation for food. Um in particular, we see cereal products, which is your maize, bread, etc., rice, uh at -1.5% and meat inflation, which is also a large uh contributor to the overall uh inflation picture, uh went to 5.1%, which is still above average food, but has dropped significantly from 13 and a half percent that we had in January this year.

[00:02:58]>> Patrick, thank you so much. Patrick Kelly, chief director for price statistics at Stats SA on the inflation figures.