THREE FOOD GROUPS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 59, 7 September 1926, Page 12

THREE FOOD GROUPS

PRICES IN JULY

LOWEE THAN LAST YEAE,

In the Monthly Abstract of Statistics, the Acting-Government Statisician, Mr. J. W. Butcher, states that the retail-price index (Dominion weighted average) for the three food groups as at 15th June, was 1597 (on the base; average prices for the four chief centres during the years 1909-13—1000), a decrease of 23 points as compared with the,index number for the preceding month and an increase of 49.3 per cent, over that for July, 1914 (viz., 1070). The index numbers for the groceries and meat groups continue to fral gradually, slight decreases in several minor items causing the falls of 2 and 5 points respectively in these groups. A very considerable drop (75 points) was recorded in the dairy-products group, the principal cause of the downward movement being a marked decrease in the price of eggs in the various towns. In all three food groups prices are, ■generally speaking, lower, than in the same month last year; the combined index number for these groups being 15 points lower than that for the corresponding month last year.' Very little difference is recorded between the index numbers for the groceries group, the index now being 9 points lower than that for last July. The index number for the dairy-products group is, however, 29 points lower than that for the corresponding month last year, the usual seasonal drop in prices in this group coming earlier this year. Meatprices, which have been consistently higher in the earlier months of this year than at corresponding periods last year, have, in July, fallen below the level of the previous July, the net result bding' a decrease of 14 points in the index number. Expenditure on food constitutes somewhat less than two-fifths of the total expenditure of the average household. It is necessary, therefore, to take into account other groups of household expenditure in estimating price movements. Statistics regarding retail prices of clothing and drapery, footwear, furnishings, household ironmongery, and other miscellaneous items of family expenditure have, therefore, been collected as at 15th May, and combined with the indexes for food and fuel and light for July and the rent index for February (the • latest available figure) in their proper proportions; Che resultant "all groups" price index showing a level of 61.4 per cent, over that for July, 1914. It now takes 32s 3^(l, on the average, to purchase what 20s would purchase in the month preceding the outbreak of the Great War.