It has seen Guernsey’s RPIX rate fall to 2.1%, 0.2% lower than the previous measurement released. This time last year saw the lowest RPIX the island has had for some time, at 1.9%, and if the declining trend continues it will soon reach that point again.
The Guernsey RPIX and RPI are measures of inflation. They measure the change in the prices of goods and services bought for the purpose of consumption or use by households. The calculations of the RPIX and RPI are based on the price change of items within a ‘shopping basket’. Whilst some prices rise over time, others will fall or fluctuate and the indices represent the average change in these prices.
Guernsey has had better RPIX than the UK or Jersey for some time now – their rates were 2.4% and 3.3% respectively.
The annual change in the RPI was 2.1% in March 2019, which was 0.3 percentage points lower than the previous quarter and 0.1 points higher than in March 2018.
The following graph shows which areas contributed most to the percentage change:
Ten of the fourteen RPIX and RPI groups saw an average price increase in the three months ending in March 2019.
The largest percentage increase (5.4%) came from the Fares and other travel costs group, making a contribution of 0.3 percentage points to the quarterly changes in both the RPIX and the RPI.