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Consumer Price Index 1970-2026

South Africa, 1970 - 2026
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Reference ID
zaf-statssa-cpi-1970-2026-v1.1
DOI
https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.25828/5zye-y989
Producer(s)
Statistics South Africa
Collections
South African Time Series
Metadata
Documentation in PDF DDI/XML JSON
Created on
Dec 12, 2023
Last modified
Dec 12, 2023
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10910
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  • Identification
  • Version
  • Scope
  • Producers and sponsors
  • Data collection
  • Data appraisal
  • access_policy
  • Contacts
  • Metadata production
  • Citation

    • Identification

    Survey ID number
    zaf-statssa-cpi-1970-2026-v1.1
    Title
    Consumer Price Index 1970-2026
    Abbreviation or Acronym
    CPI 1970-2026
    Country
    Name Country code
    South Africa zaf
    Study type
    Price Survey
    Abstract
    The CPI is a current social and economic indicator constructed to measure changes over time in the general level of prices of consumer goods and services that households acquire, use, or pay for. The index measures changes in consumer prices over time by measuring the cost of purchasing a fixed basket of consumer goods and services of constant quality and similar characteristics. The products in the basket are selected to be representative of households' expenditure during a specific year. Such an index is called a fixed-basket price index. Changes in the index reflect the effects of price changes on the cost of achieving a constant standard of living.

    The South African CPI has three equally important objectives:
    1. To measure inflation in the economy so that macroeconomic policy is based on comprehensive and up-to-date price information.
    2. To measure changes in the cost of living of South African households to promote equity in measures taken to adjust wages, grants, service agreements and contracts.
    3. To provide a deflator for consumer expenditure in the national accounts and other economic data, to compute volume (as opposed to nominal) estimates.

    In compiling the South African CPI, Stats SA largely follows the methodology guidelines in the 2020 Consumer Price Index Manual: Concepts and Methods published jointly by the International Monetary Fund, International Labour Organization, Statistical Office of the European Union, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and World Bank.
    Kind of Data
    Time-Series

    Version

    Version Description
    v1.1: Edited data for public distribution
    Version Date
    2026
    Version Notes
    Version 1: Contained data from January 1970 to May 2023.

    Version 1.1: Contains updated data, from January 1970 to June 2026. The following data files have been updated:

    - cpi-2008-2017 and cpi-2017-2023 have been updated to cpi-2008-2026-v1.1
    - cpi-average-prices-urban-2017-2023 has been updated to cpi-2017-2026-prices-urban-v1.1
    - cpi-average-prices-2017-2023 has been updated to cpi-2017-2026-prices-provinces-v1.1

    The cpi-2017-2026-5&8-digit-v1 is a new additional data file.

    Scope

    Notes

    The South African CPI uses the 1999 version of the Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) of the United Nations Statistical Division to classify goods and services. COICOP is the international standard for classifying household expenditure. Goods and services are classified according to their intended use.

    The high-level COICOP categories are:

    01 - Food and non-alcoholic beverages
    02 - Alcoholic beverages and tobacco
    03 - Clothing and footwear
    04 - Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels
    05 - Furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance
    06 - Health
    07 - Transport
    08 - Communication
    09 - Recreation and culture
    10 - Education
    11 - Restaurants and hotels
    12 - Miscellaneous goods and services

    Producers and sponsors

    Primary investigators
    Name Affiliation
    Statistics South Africa South African Government

    Data collection

    Dates of Data Collection
    Start End
    1970 2026
    Time Method
    Time-series [timeseries]

    Data appraisal

    Data Appraisal
    In the cpi-2017-2026-prices-provinces-v1.1 data file, there are no observations from April 2020 to May 2022. The previous version of this data file also had no observations in this time period.

    access_policy

    Access authority
    Name Affiliation URL Email
    DataFirst University of Cape Town support@data1st.org
    Access conditions
    Public access data for use under a Creative Commons CC-BY (Attribution-only) License
    Citation requirements
    Statistics South Africa. Consumer Price Index 1970-2026 [dataset]. Version 1.1. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa [producer], 2026. Cape Town: DataFirst [distributor], 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25828/5zye-y989

    Contacts

    Contacts
    Name Affiliation Email URL
    DataFirst Support University of Cape Town support@data1st.org

    Metadata production

    Producers
    Name Affiliation Role
    DataFirst University of Cape Town Metadata producer
    Date of Metadata Production
    2026

    Metadata version

    DDI Document version
    Version 2

    Citation

    Citation
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