April’s Consumer Price Index
April’s Consumer Price Index [CPI] shows some interesting ups and downs. If you stayed away from lamb chops, pastas, and fresh fruit then your groceries should have gone up only 0.2 percent in April. Those items went up 5.0 percent, 3.8 percent, and 3.4 percent, respectively. There was a 0.5 percent rise in rents in rent-cotrolled properties, but only a 0.2 percent rise in the overall rent sector. This confirms that rents, generally, are not rising and reflects the slight downturn in the demand for rental accommodations.
There were big increases elsewhere as well. A 9.1 percent increase in the average price of health insurance premiums that was set off by the 24 percent and 13 percent increases in the Government controlled H.I.P. program and minimum health benefits package. Motorcycle licencing and insurance fees went up 16.0 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively. Airfare costs rose 21.4 percent, and foreign travel costs increased 6.1 percent; with clothing and footwear just behind at 6.0 percent.
Fuel and power had no price movement. Drinkers and smokers saw no increases in the cost of their pleasures – or sins as some see them.
The CPI compared the cost of living in April 2010 with the cost of living in April 2006. Overall, if you spent $100 on things in Arpil 2006, you would have spent $113.90 if you bought exactly the same things in April 2010. In layman’s language, the cost of living went up an average of 3.5 percent which is another way of saying that you needed an additional $3.48 per hundred dollars, per year, to buy the same stuff twelve months later.
Overall, in April 2010, consumers paid 2.9 percent more in April 2010 than they spent for exactly the same stuff in April 2009. The annual rate of inflation went up 2.3 percent in March 2010.
Editors note: Full details follow below, click ‘full screen’ for greater clarity:
