- Petrol is R30.25 a litre, interest rates are 7.25% and take-home pay buys 2.6% less than a year ago.
- Maize meal and factory food prices are lower and confidence has improved, but taxi fares and food prices are still uncertain.
Prices are moving in different directions at once. Here is where your money stands as October starts.
Here’s what’s going up this month, from Wednesday, 95 petrol costs R30.25 a litre in Gauteng, and a full 50-litre tank costs about R166 more. The Reserve Bank raised interest rates to 7.25% on 23 September, which adds about R337 a month to a R2 million home loan. The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group’s September index puts the average food basket at R5,488.06, which is R108.64 more than a year ago.
Pay and debt. Average take-home pay was R21,622 in August, but it buys 2.6% less than a year ago, PayInc says. In the second quarter, 41.8% of people with credit were three or more months behind on at least one loan, Eighty20 found.
Coming down or holding. A month’s maize meal for a family of seven, 30kg, costs R293.73 at the shops the group checks. That is about R9.80 a kilogram and 11% less than a year ago. Rice is 10% cheaper. Factory prices for food were 0.6% lower in August. Consumer confidence improved to -13 from -19, led by lower-income households.
What is still unclear; Santaco says it is too early to say whether taxi fares will rise, and associations will decide after talking to commuters. The Pietermaritzburg group counts four taxi trips a day for a minimum wage worker, so every R1 added to a fare costs about R84 a month. The R4 rise in Pietermaritzburg in June added R336.
The Road Freight Association warned that freight costs could rise 4% to 6%, with knock-on effects for food. Economist Johann Els says higher fuel costs have not yet shown up in food prices. Grain prices have also risen about R600 a tonne since early August. But the September shop prices were collected in the first week of the month, so we do not yet know whether maize meal will follow.
The next Pietermaritzburg index is due at the end of October.
