South African food inflation is accelerating again

South African food and non-alcoholic beverage (NAB) inflation – hereafter to be referred to as food inflation, for short – continued its renewed acceleration in October, the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP) has reported, in its latest “Food Inflation Brief”. After five months of declining food inflation, in September it moved up again, slightly, followed by a noticeable increase in October.  In year-on-year (year-on-year) terms, food inflation ran at 8.7% last month, and in month-on-month terms was at 1.5%. This compared with the consumer price index (CPI) headline inflation figures of 5.9% (year-on-year) and 0.9% (month-on-month). (CPI headline inflation is also trending up again.) Food inflation contributed 1.6 percentage points to the year-on-year CPI headline inflation figure, and 0.3 percentage points to the month-on-month number.