Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for May 21st, 2009

Stats Canada published the CPI numbers yesterday and it was surprisingly low, at 0.4% for the entire 12 month period ending in April 2009. If you don’t count food the CPI was actually down by 1.1% over the previous 12 months, however if you don’t count energy the actual inflation is up 2.4% which just goes to show that food and energy are major standard deviation stretchers for the statistical data (in fact it’s not really a curve with a single Normal).

Food Up, Up, Up

The report says about food:

Prices increases for food were widespread in the 12 months to April. Large increases were recorded for fresh vegetables (+26.0%), fresh fruit (+16.8%), cereal products (+9.6%), beef (+9.0%) and chicken (+9.0%).

These numbers are wild. Fresh veggies have been on the rise but the reason why is not really obvious, unless you view it as an echo of last year’s gas price gouging (which seems to be returning this summer as well). 

Energy and Transport Down, Down, Down

Two significant price drops were in Energy and Transport costs in general:

Gasoline prices fell 24.7% from April 2008 to April 2009 following a 12-month decline of 21.0% in March. The 12-month decline in April was due more to high prices in 2008 than to recent developments. On a month-to-month basis, gasoline prices rose 1.0% from March to April….

…. Natural gas prices fell 17.5% in the 12 months to April, following a 9.5% increase in March. Natural gas prices fell in most provinces, especially in Alberta and Ontario, where large drops largely accounted for the overall decrease…..

This explains why my Natural Gas bill is dropping, but Gasoline prices are starting to creep back up to $1 per liter again, even with little pressure on supplies, wonder why?

CPI for April 2009

The Really Big Picture