{"id":88859,"date":"2025-10-19T22:39:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T22:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/88859\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T22:39:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T22:39:11","slug":"power-price-surge-helps-push-inflation-to-15-month-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/88859\/","title":{"rendered":"Power price surge helps push inflation to 15-month high"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annual electricity price increases are at their highest since the late 1980s, as Stats NZ reveals inflation has risen to 3.0% \u2014 now sitting at the top of the target band.<\/p>\n

The latest consumer price index figures show inflation to the September quarter sitting at the top of the Reserve Bank’s target band after four quarters comfortably within it. <\/p>\n

It’s the biggest jump in 15 months, with electricity prices spiking in a way not seen for decades. Economists had picked the 3.0% figure in their forecasts for today’s release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stats NZ prices and deflators spokesperson Nicola Growden said the largest contributors to inflation were “all in the housing and household utilities group”. <\/p>\n

“The 3.0% annual inflation rate in the September 2025 quarter is the highest since the June 2024 quarter, when it was 3.3%,” she said in a media release.<\/p>\n

\""You<\/p>\n

“You can get pointy-headed economists like me saying it’s over but households don’t feel it straight away.” (Source: istock.com)<\/p>\n

The main contributors to higher costs were electricity, which was up 11%, and a 10.1% contribution to the annual increase. Rent and rates both contributed 9.2% to the annual increase, being a 2.6% and 8.8% rise, respectively.<\/p>\n

The top three contributors make up around 17% of the “weight” in the inflation basket.<\/p>\n

“Annual electricity increases are at their highest since the late 1980s, when there were several major reforms in the electricity market,\u201d Growden said. <\/p>\n

“The 11.3% annual increase in electricity prices is the largest since the March 1989 quarter when they rose 12.8%.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petrol and pharmaceuticals fall in price <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the 2.6% increase in rents was the smallest annual increase in over four years. <\/p>\n

The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including a swathe of weather warnings, thieves make off with France\u2019s crown jewels, and a new police investigation into Prince Andrew. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

Rents have only increased 2.9% in the 12 months to June 2021.<\/p>\n

Of the five broad regions measured by Stats NZ, rent prices in Canterbury and the rest of the South Island had the largest annual increases, while Wellington had the smallest.<\/p>\n

Pharmaceutical products, telecommunications equipment, and petrol all fell in price over the year. Council rates and payments are measured once a year in the September quarter and have been one of the main drivers of annual inflation in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe annual increase in rates in the September 2025 quarter was lower than the 12.2% increase in the September 2024 quarter, but higher than the average increase of around 7.3% observed between 2018 and 2025,\u201d Growden said.<\/p>\n

Inflation up ahead of OCR call next month<\/p>\n

The Reserve Bank targets inflation between 1% and 3%, making the latest figure the upper threshold of what it considers acceptable price growth.<\/p>\n

The rise comes as the central bank weighs up its final official cash rate decision this year, currently at 2.5% with many expecting a further cut in late November.<\/p>\n

The quarterly inflation rate for the three months to September was 1%.<\/p>\n

Despite sitting at the target band’s upper limit, the latest figure shows inflation has cooled significantly from its peak of 7.3% in mid-2022.<\/p>\n

At the last annual release for the June quarter, annual inflation sat at 2.7%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Annual electricity price increases are at their highest since the late 1980s, as Stats NZ reveals inflation has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69,244],"class_list":["post-88859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}