Stats SA alters consumer inflation basket, adding e-hailing services while ditching teddy bears

What do teddy bears, driving licences and coffee beans have in common?

All three have been dumped from the basket of goods and services used by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) to measure consumer inflation.

The new basket has 71 additions while 53 products have been removed and 29 have been reorganised through merging, splitting or reclassification. It all adds up to 391 items, down from 396 previously. 

This is a periodic shake-up – in line with global practice – which is undertaken to reflect changing consumer trends and provide a more accurate reading. For example, it has been a long time since the once ubiquitous VHS or 8-track tapes were included in the basket. 

“The rise in e-hailing services ensured its inclusion as a new item ... Driving licences and post office box rentals no longer make the cut,” a Stats SA statement said.

The new food basket points to both changing tastes and the inclusion of items which were perhaps overdue.

“New food products that were added to the basket include basmati rice, meat bones, meat patties, chicken nuggets and ready-made meals,” Stats SA said.

This is sensible: meat bones have long been among the staples in lower-income households which feel the bite of food inflation sharply. Moving up the income ladder, the addition of ready-made meals was probably also tardy: many middle-class consumers buy such foodstuffs for convenience, and this is hardly a new trend.

“Items that were removed include ready-mix flour, flavoured milk, frozen potato chips and ground coffee/coffee beans,” Stats SA said.

In this correspondent’s household, coffee beans are a big item and so I feel the CPI basket will not accurately capture my inflationary experience. But it can’t possibly reflect all consumer spending patterns.

Another sensible move is the inclusion of a range of school uniform items. This will more accurately gauge the price pressures felt by many South African households.

With the rise of the smartphone, digital cameras have finally been expelled from the list.

Late to the party is the inclusion of gas in cylinders, and candles. This made sense when Eskom’s rolling nationwide blackouts were a daily feature of life, but it has not had to pull that trigger for more than 300 days and counting.

But teddy bears getting the boot?

The preferences of demanding pre-schoolers are also changing and it seems this early 20th-century American creation – named after former US President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt and inspired by an incident in which he refused to shoot a tethered black bear while hunting – no longer holds the appeal it once did. DM