{"id":480438,"date":"2026-02-17T10:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T10:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/480438\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T10:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T10:09:07","slug":"food-shock-rent-relief-january-inflation-keeps-rbnz-cautious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/480438\/","title":{"rendered":"Food shock, rent relief: January inflation keeps RBNZ cautious"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That pressure is being driven largely by global commodity markets and looks \u201cmore persistent\u201d, even if it can be disinflationary over time as it squeezes discretionary spending.<\/p>\n<p>There was also a headline\u2011grabbing move in confectionery: the price of a block of chocolate is up 20% on a year ago, with a 5% monthly rise in sweets\u00a0in the lead\u2011up to Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n<p>Rents flat, energy pressures easing<\/p>\n<p>The friendlier news for mortgage advisers is on housing\u2011related costs. Average rents were flat in January \u2013 the first time since 2007 they haven\u2019t risen in a January \u2013 with annual rental inflation near record lows.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mpamag.com\/nz\/companies\/asb\/307808\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ASB<\/a>&#8216;s\u00a0Wesley Tanuvasa, economist, and Mark Smith, senior economist (pictured, center to right),\u00a0\u201crental inflation has remained dormant,\u201d reflecting low population growth and a strong supply response from higher\u2011density building.<\/p>\n<p>Energy\u2011related inflation is also easing. ASB estimates household electricity and gas prices rose just 0.3% in January, with annual household energy inflation slowing to 11.9% from 13%. Petrol prices fell 2.4% over the month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That pressure is being driven largely by global commodity markets and looks \u201cmore persistent\u201d, even if it can&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[146703,45,49,48,46,135,126612],"class_list":["post-480438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-asb","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-inflation","tag-westpac"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}