Price of food expected to drop, economist says
It's a much-needed relief for cash-strapped South African households as an analyst at one of the country's biggest banks sees the price of some food, including red meat, coming down.
The outlook follows a prolonged period of rising inflation, with data by Stats SA showing CPI accelerated to 7.1% in March from the previous month's 7%.
It was driven by inflation for food and non-alcoholic beverages, which rose to 14%.
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But FNB's Agricultural Economist, Dawie Maree, says with international prices easing up and a healthy crop harvest expected, food inflation should start to slow down.
"So the fluctuating in the international price increases that we experienced last year was due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and then we also had some troubles in some of the regular oil-producing countries like Singapore and so on where palm oil is a big one.
"There is also the agreement that some of the grains out of Ukraine and Russia can be exported. So that also assisted with the drop in international prices."
