What was the impact of the reweighting of CPI on the level of inflation in South Africa?

In today’s post, we estimate what impact of the recent reweighting of CPI on the level of inflation in South Africa was. We compare the level of division CPI inflation when applying the updated weights and the previous set of CPI weights. We estimate that the impact on headline inflation is negligible. The impact is largest for the restaurants and accommodation as its weight in the CPI almost doubled, primarily on account of some alcohol sales being shifted to that category from alcoholic beverages and tobacco and the inclusion of self-catering accommodation.

Historical CPI weights dating back to 1970 are available on our EconData platform for enterprise subscribers. To our knowledge, EconData is the only source offering these historical weights for easy download in Excel, R, or Python. Get in touch if you are interested in subscribing.

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