According to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the April-June 2012 quarter, the price of computers fell over the last three months — but fruit and vegetables went up in cost. What’s going on?
Picture by Suvodeb Banerjee
The 3.8 per cent drop in audio, visual and computing equipment was the second-biggest in the categories tracked to calculate the CPI, beaten only by travel (4.0 per cent). Vegetables topped the list with a 5.2 per cent rise, while fruit went up by 3.8 per cent.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), “the rise in vegetable and fruit prices was mainly due to cooler weather conditions with rain and flooding affecting crops in the eastern states”. Looks like I picked a bad for a vegetable-heavy budget diet. No comments from the ABS on the computing category, though ongoing price falls in this area aren’t unusual.
The overall CPI rose 0.5 per cent in the June quarter, and has gone up 1.2 per cent year-on-year. One point for drivers to note: average fuel costs are the lowest they have been in a year, as you can see in the chart below:
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