Prices & Cost of Living
What households actually pay — the basket, the 14 essential lines under standing watch, and the mechanism that turns a border cost into a shelf price.
Headline CPI is 3.1% with the food basket at 4.2% — housing, water and energy carry the largest single contribution at 32.1% of the basket. Nothing on the 14-line essential watchlist sits above the 8% critical threshold. The weighted duty rate across that basket is 5.4%, and a 10% rise in landed cost still reaches shelves as roughly 6.4% five to seven weeks later.
Essential goods watchlist
The exact 14 lines an emergency duty suspension would cover. Every row opens the line.
Bars carry the status colour of the line: red above the 8% critical threshold, amber between 5% and 8%, blue below. Status is always stated in the table as a label too.
| Item | Price index | Year on year | Duty rate | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rice | 100.0 | 4.0% | 5% | Within threshold |
| Flour | 100.0 | 3.8% | 5% | Within threshold |
| Bread | 100.0 | 4.5% | 0% | Within threshold |
| Cooking oil | 100.0 | 5.2% | 10% | Approaching threshold |
| Milk (UHT) | 100.0 | 3.6% | 5% | Within threshold |
| Infant formula | 100.0 | 2.8% | 0% | Within threshold |
| Eggs | 100.0 | 4.8% | 5% | Within threshold |
| Chicken | 100.0 | 5.5% | 10% | Approaching threshold |
| Canned fish | 100.0 | 4.1% | 5% | Within threshold |
| Sugar | 100.0 | 3.4% | 5% | Within threshold |
| Salt | 100.0 | 2.6% | 0% | Within threshold |
| Tinned vegetables | 100.0 | 4.3% | 10% | Within threshold |
| LPG (cooking gas) | 100.0 | 6.1% | 0% | Approaching threshold |
| Bottled water | 100.0 | 3.9% | 15% | Within threshold |
Retail price survey · Customs tariff schedule 4 Aug 2026 · 09:00 Price index rebased to 100 at the start of the fiscal year; duty rate is the applied tariff on the leading tariff line for each item.