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Australia's consumer prices rose at a slower yearly pace in the three months ended September, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday. However, on a quarterly basis, consumer prices climbed at a faster pace than in the previous quarter.
The consumer price index climbed 1.3% year-on-year in the third quarter, slower than the 1.5% rise in the second quarter, but came in slightly above economists' expectations for a 1.2% increase. This marks the slowest annual gain in consumer prices since the second quarter of 1999. Underlying inflation - which excludes housing and financial & insurance services from the basket - grew 1.2% in the third quarter.
Education showed the biggest rise in prices, climbing 5.6% on a yearly basis, followed by housing, up 5.5%. Consumer prices rose 4.4% in health, while prices of household contents & services and alcohol & tobacco increased 4% each. Food prices rose 2.5% and clothing & footwear prices were up 2.3%.
On the other hand, consumer prices of financial & insurance services recorded the biggest annual decline, falling 7.2% in the third quarter, followed by transportation, down 5.1%.
On a quarterly basis, consumer prices were up 1% in the third quarter, faster than the 0.5% rise in the previous quarter and slightly above expectations for a 0.9% increase. Excluding housing and financial & insurance services, consumer prices were up 0.4%.
In the third quarter, the fastest sequential rise in prices was recorded in housing, up 2.9%, and transportation, up 1.9%. On the other hand, consumer prices decreased 1% in health, while food prices decreased 0.8%.
Third quarter's higher-than-anticipated inflation results is in line with forecasts for a 25 basis points rate hike in the Reserve Bank of Australia's next monetary policy meeting on November 3. Earlier in the month, Governor Glenn Stevens became the first G-20 central bank chief to raise the benchmark interest rate since the onset of the global crisis, with a 25 basis points hike to 3.25% from a 49-year low of 3.00%, saying that a "very expansionary policy was no longer necessary, and possibly imprudent".
The central bank chief has stressed the need to move away from emergency settings for monetary policy, with the Australian economy experiencing only a modest downturn in the face of the financial crisis.
Official data from the statistical bureau showed earlier in the week that producer prices had rebounded sequentially in the third quarter after two successive quarters of decline. The producer price index rose 0.1% in the third quarter, in contrast to the record 0.8% fall in the previous quarter. Annually, producer prices increased 0.2% in the third quarter, marking the slowest gain since the series first began in the fourth quarter of 1998, tempering the central bank's inflation fears somewhat.
In other economic news, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations announced earlier that skilled job vacancies in the country were up 1.9% month-on-month in October. On a yearly basis, skilled job vacancies decreased 44% in October.
The Australian dollar declined against its major counterparts following the release of third quarter's consumer price data.
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