The Consumer Price Index for August 2023 increased by 2.3 percent compared to the same month of the previous year, according to figures released by the Samoa Bureau of Statistics.

The Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages index increased by 10.9 percent.  The Restaurants index increased 9.9 percent.  The Miscellaneous Goods and Services index also increased by 7.9 percent. The Average Annual Inflation for the year ended August 2023 was 10.3 percent.

The CPI fell 0.9 percent from July 2023.

This was mainly influenced by the increase in the local goods component by 7.3 percent from the same month last year as a result of higher prices for local food, meals, new pickup vehicles and airline fares.

The imported goods component on the other hand fell 1.9 percent on a year-on-year basis due to lower prices for imported food and fuel.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages was the largest contributor to the 2.3 percent rise in the CPI in August 2023, with a contribution of 4.8 percentage-points to the overall increase in August 2023. The most significant drivers of this within the group were sugar (up 33.0%), corned beef (up 29.6%) fresh fish (up 22.6%), flour (up 26.2%), onion (up 28.5%), devondale milk (up 29.3%), coke (up 22.6%), potatoes (up 44.9%), Nescafe coffee (up 22.5%), koko Samoa (up 43.3%), Chinese cabbage (up 67.2%), cucumber (up 56.9%), round cabbage (up 54.3%), taro (up 37.5%), coconut (up 19.6%) and tomato (up 33.9%).

The next largest contributor was miscellaneous goods and services with a contribution of 0.3 percentage-point, increasing 7.9% compared to August 2022. The main drivers of this increase were toilet soap (up 25.9%), colgate toothpaste (up 12.8%) and embalming (up 11.7%). Restaurants and hotels also contributed 0.2 percentage-point to the rise in CPI due to the increase of chicken and chips meal (up 18.8%), steam rice and chicken meal (up 13.5%) and curry and chopsuey meal (up 6.7%).

Other groups such as clothing and footwear, furnishing, household equipment and maintenance indices recorded increases of 2.1 and 0.5 percent respectively.

On the other hand, transport, education, health, housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuel, recreation and culture, communication and alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics all declined by 14.1, 12.0, 11.8, 3.4, 1.8, 1.3 and 0.2 percent in that order.

The Consumer Price (CPI) measures the rate of inflation for Samoa. It is designed to measure the change in prices for the goods purchased by households in Samoa.

The CPI measures the change in prices by comparing the prices for a basket of goods and services at the collection period with the price for the same goods in a base period.

The basket of goods that is priced is based on the average expenditures of households as recorded in the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES). The HIES survey identifies how much households spend on different items. The more households spend on an item on average, the more important it is to the price index, and the higher the weight in the index.