Cheese and butter push food prices up

Food prices increased 0.6 percent in the October 2007 month, Statistics New Zealand said today.

The increase was mainly due to higher prices for cheese (up 7.3 percent) and butter (up 23.0 percent)within the grocery food subgroup (up 1.5 percent).

Other main contributors to the 1.5 percent increase in the grocery food subgroup were fresh milk (up 3.0percent) and chocolate (up 3.8 percent).

The main downward contribution came from lowerprices for chocolate biscuits (down 7.5 percent).

In the October 2007 month, the only downward subgroup contribution came from lower prices for fruit andvegetables (down 1.5 percent).

Within this subgroup, the main contributors to the decrease came fromlower prices for tomatoes (down 10.9 percent), lettuce (down 31.0 percent) and capsicums (down19.7 percent).

The main upward contributions came from higher prices for broccoli (up 29.4 percent)and frozen vegetables (up 8.2 percent).For the year to October 2007, food prices rose 3.6 percent.

The upward contributions came from higherprices for the grocery food (up 4.7 percent), meat, poultry and fish (up 5.6 percent), and restaurant mealsand ready-to-eat food (up 3.7 percent) subgroups.

A less significant upward contribution came from higherprices for non-alcoholic beverages (up 3.6 percent).

The only downward contribution came from lowerprices for the fruit and vegetables subgroup (down 1.6 percent).