Headline inflation has declined from its mid-2022 peak, but it is not clear whether measures of underlying inflation have reached their peak yet. Our measure of common price changes across categories in the CPI basket is currently higher than the Statistics SA measure that excludes food, non-alcoholic beverages, fuel and energy. Like the trimmed mean measure, our measure remains near the upper bound of the inflation target. Our measure suggests that there has been more broad-based inflation pressure since 2019 than implied by the core measure of underlying inflation.
