Johannesburg - Inflation is yet again on the march, hitting 6.4 percent in October, Statistics SA said on Wednesday.
This news comes a day before the South African reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee is due to announce whether interest rates will be hiked.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast that consumer price inflation would come in at 6.3 percent.
On a month-on-month basis, prices were up 0.5 percent after a 0.2 percent contraction previously, Reuters reported.
Core inflation, which excludes the prices of food, non-alcoholic beverages, petrol and energy, increased to 5.7 percent year-on-year from 5.6 percent, but slowed slightly to 0.2 percent month-on-month from 0.3 percent, the wire service said.
The Reserve Bank’s mandate is to keep inflation at between 3 and 6 percent.
Read also: Rates seen kept on hold
Despite the increase in inflation, which has slowed since its 2016 peak of 7 percent in February, economists polled by Bloomberg do not anticipate a rate hike on Thursday.
The South African Reserve Bank has held the rate at 7 percent since March, which puts the prime lending rate at 10.5 percent.
All 19 economists in a Bloomberg survey said the Monetary Policy Committee will keep borrowing costs unchanged on Thursday after raising rates by two percentage points since January 2014.
This is also despite a weakening and volatile currency, which would benefit from a hike in rates.
The rand slid the most in five years after Donald Trump’s surprising election win on November 8 over fears for emerging markets being hard hit if Trump’s polarisation policies come into effect.
.A rate hike would hit consumers - already battling with rising fuel and food prices - hard and deter economic growth. Already, SA’s gross domestic product growth is expected to be flat this year when compared with 2015.
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