CANBERRA (XINHUA) – Australia’s annual inflation rate has fallen to its lowest level in three years.
Official data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) yesterday revealed that the consumer price index (CPI), the headline measure of inflation in Australia, rose by 2.7 per cent in the 12 months to August. It marks a fall from 3.5 per cent in the 12 months to July and the lowest annual CPI rise since August 2021.
“It’s a very heartening result that shows our policies are helping, but we’re not complacent because we know people are still under pressure,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers said in a statement posted on social media responding to the data. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the August figures were in line with economists’ expectations.
The ABS identified a 2.6 per cent rise in housing costs between August 2023 and 2024, and 3.4 per cent increases in the price of food and non-alcoholic beverages, in the same period as the biggest drivers of inflation.
However, those rises were offset by a 1.1 per cent fall in transport costs.
Electricity prices fell by a record 17.9 per cent in the 12-month period due to government rebates, and automotive fuel prices fell by 7.6 per cent. The figures were released one day after the central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), kept the official interest rate on hold at 4.35 per cent, where it has been since November 2023.
The RBA board said in its monetary policy statement that returning inflation to the bank’s target range of two-to-three per cent was its highest priority. Annual trimmed mean inflation, the underlying inflation measure that excludes volatile price changes and is focused more heavily by the RBA, was 3.4 per cent in the 12 months to August, down from 3.8 per cent in July and 4.4 per cent in May.
