Time to vegoice?
Monthly Food Inflation Update - July 2023
The Fruit & Vegetable was the only monthly CPI indicator category to show a price decline during July, according the recent release of Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) food inflation data. It was a reasonably strong easing over the month too with the Fruit & Vegetable CPI indicator down by nearly 3%, bringing some food inflation relief to vegetarians, vegans and rabbits alike!
The Dairy category continued to show price pressures with the indicator lifting by 1.9% over the month. Meanwhile prices in the Meat & Seafood category was up by just 0.6%. The monthly indicators don’t allow us to see which meat types are contributing to the price change most, but given the saleyard prices of cattle and sheep presently I suspect most of the price increase in the Meat & Seafood category at the moment isn’t due to higher red meat prices. We will have to wait until the September quarter data release to be sure. Alcohol and Bread & Cereal categories were almost unchanged over July 2023.
Analysis of the annual change to the indicator shows that dairy continues to be the most inflationary food category with prices up by 10% from levels seen in 2022. The deflationary pressure on the Fruit & Vegetable category over July has seen the annual inflationary price change for 2023 sit at just 1.7% above the price levels seen last year.
