KEY POINTS:
If each supermarket visit you make feels a bit more painful than the last one - don't worry, it's not just your imagination.
Food price rises are very real.
Staples like milk, bread, chicken and meat rose significantly in price in February.
A 0.8 per cent rise in food price sent the Food Price Index up a whopping 5.2 per cent in the year, Statistics New Zealand said today.
The index continues to be driven up by grocery food, the department said.
Higher prices for the grocery food sub-group (up 1.1 per cent) accounted for half of the increase in the index over the month.
Grocery was the most significant contributor to the FPI movement for the preceding five months and is up 9 per cent for the year.
Within the grocery food sub-group, the main contributors to the 1.1 per cent increase were fresh milk (up 4 per cent), bread (up 3.4 per cent) and potato crisps (up 5.5 per cent). The most significant downward move was for boxed chocolates (down 14.4 per cent).
The meat, poultry and fish sub-group, which rose 1.6 per cent, was mainly driven by higher prices for beef (up 2.7 per cent) and fresh chicken (up 2.8 per cent).
The most significant downward move was for lamb (down 5.4 per cent).
The biggest downward sub-group contribution came from lower prices for fruit and vegetables (down 1.5 per cent) in the February 2008 month. Fruit prices fell 5.9 per cent and vegetable prices rose 2.0 per cent.
For the year, prices for restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food rose 4.2 per cent, meat, poultry and fish rose 3.9 per cent and non-alcoholic beverages up 4.8 per cent.
The only downward contribution came from the fruit and vegetables sub-group (down 2.5 per cent).
And there was some good news for chocoholics - the prices of boxed chocolates fell over 14 per cent.
- NZPA
