Australian inflation rises to 13-month high in August
CANBERRA: Australia's annual rate of inflation accelerated to a 13-month high of 3.0% in August, showed official figures released on Wednesday.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the consumer price index (CPI) rose by 3.0% in the 12 months to the end of August, up from 2.8% in the year to July and 1.9% in June.
It marks Australia's highest rate of headline inflation since July 2024, when annual CPI growth was 3.5%.
The ABS said that the biggest contributors to annual inflation in the year to August were a 4.5% increase in housing costs, a 3.0% rise in food and non-alcoholic beverage prices and a 6.0% rise in alcohol and tobacco prices.
Electricity costs rose by 24.6% in the 12-month period, which the ABS said could largely be attributed to the end of government rebate schemes.
Excluding the impact of changes in rebates, electricity prices rose by 5.9%, said ABS head of prices statistics Michelle Marquardt.
Annual trimmed mean inflation, a measure of underlying inflation preferred by central bank the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), was 2.6% in the year to August, down from 2.7% in July.
Projections released in August by the RBA's Monetary Policy Board forecast that headline inflation would increase over the second half of 2025 to be above 3.0% before gradually returning to the midpoint of the 2-3% target range by mid-2027.
It forecast that underlying inflation would remain stable at the midpoint of the target range through the entirety of 2026 and 2027.
By RSS/Xinhua
