CANBERRA, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Australia's annual rate of inflation accelerated to a 13-month high of 3.0 percent in August, showed official figures released on Wednesday.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the consumer price index (CPI) rose by 3.0 percent in the 12 months to the end of August, up from 2.8 percent in the year to July and 1.9 percent in June.
It marks Australia's highest rate of headline inflation since July 2024 when annual CPI growth was 3.5 percent.
The ABS said that the biggest contributors to annual inflation in the year to August were a 4.5 percent increase in housing costs, a 3.0 percent rise in food and non-alcoholic beverage prices and a 6.0 percent rise in alcohol and tobacco prices.
Electricity costs rose by 24.6 percent in the 12-month period, which the ABS said could largely be attributed to the end of government rebate schemes.
Excluding the impact of changes in rebates, electricity prices rose by 5.9 percent, said ABS head of prices statistics Michelle Marquardt.
Annual trimmed mean inflation, a measure of underlying inflation preferred by central bank the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), was 2.6 percent in the year to August, down from 2.7 percent in July.
Projections released in August by the RBA's Monetary Policy Board forecast that headline inflation would increase over the second half of 2025 to be above 3.0 percent before gradually returning to the midpoint of the 2-3 percent target range by mid-2027.
It forecast that underlying inflation would remain stable at the midpoint of the target range through the entirety of 2026 and 2027. ■
