Thesis (M.Com. (Development Theory and Policy))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Economic and Business Sciences, 2015. / Food price inflation has been an important subject of debate internationally since 2008. This sharp increase in food prices experienced during 2008 lead to intense research into the causes, dynamics and responses to this particular instance of food price inflation. The international literature attributed food price inflation to such factors as climate change, increases in energy costs and speculative activity in financial markets for agricultural commodities. This research report undertakes a review of the measurement of food price inflation in South Africa, broadly assessing how it is to be linked to the poor in South Africa. The research report focuses on the work of institutions concerned with the measurement of food price inflation in South Africa. Different methodologies of identifying foods as food staples are looked at. Food prices and trends are analysed using CPI data from January 2008 until October 2008, using selected consumer price index series from Statistics South Africa. The research report finds that the institutions studied show evidence of that higher food price inflation is correlated with demographic markers of poverty, although the traditional measure, the CPI, does not suggests that this is very extensive. This, it is argued, is due to the calculation methodologies used in the published CPI, and the data period. The research report then ends with an overview of the political economy of food in South Africa, thereby makes recommendations as to why the measurement of food price inflation is important for the poor.

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, 2012. / The purpose of this study is to investigate if the International Comparison Program (ICP) methodology could be used to examine the different buying power (worth) of the currency on the same products or goods amongst South African provinces. The method will be tested on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) food data collected from January 2006 to December 2006 from the main cities in the provinces. The food basket is obtained via the Income and Expenditure Survey (IES), which is generally updated every 5 years. South Africa (SA) has disparities and differentials in economic indicators such as the CPI, Gross Domestic Product and employment, amongst the provinces which are caused by among other things geographic set-up, urbanisation, inflation rates, and expenditure patterns. We use the monthly data to do an inter-provincial comparison of food prices by deriving annual purchasing power parities (PPPs) for each of the provinces, using the Country Product Dummy (CPD) method recommended as best practice by the World Bank. The CPI data is validated using the SEMPER software developed by the African Development Bank (AfDB). The validated data is examined for variability over the months and between the provinces using Analysis of Variance. Significant price differences are found for various products over the months and between provinces. The validated data was used to compute PPPs at the group and basic heading level. PPPs were investigated for differences in the provinces on grouped level of food products using Analysis of Variance. The reliability of PPPs between provinces is investigated both at grouped and basic heading level of products using the Cronbach-alpha statistic. The results show that there are no significant variations in PPPs across provinces. This could be due to the similar business opportunities or developments in the provinces or due to the aggregation of prices from the individual product (basic heading) to the main product group level. This implies that the cost of the food basket is the same across provinces.

Thesis (M.Sc. Agriculture (Agricultural Economics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / Beef and chicken meat play a very crucial role in providing food to South African consumers. However, the rise of food prices in South Africa is viewed to curtail progress and drives consumers into debt and forgone opportunity to access food. Hence, it is of importance to understand the consumer price index (CPI) of meat and the disaggregate components of beef and chicken meat producer price indexes (PPI) as they give a clear insight into how individual commodities contribute to the general and food price inflation. The study aimed to comparatively analyse the relationship between PPI beef and CPI meat as well as PPI chicken meat and CPI meat in South Africa from 1991 to 2018. The objectives of the study were to compare the indexes’ variability, correlation, and causality between the different PPI and CPI components. The objectives were analysed using the Coefficient of variation (CV), the Pearson coefficient correlation, the Granger causality test, and the Vector Error Correction model. The CV findings highlight that PPI beef had high variability (65%) compared to CPI meat (56.7%), whereas PPI chicken meat had low variability (49.2%) compared to CPI meat(56.7%). There was evidence of a positive correlation (0.99) between PPI beef and CPI meat as well as PPI chicken meat and CPI meat using Pearson coefficient correlation. In addition, a long-run relationship was found between PPI beef and CPI meat as well as between PPI chicken meat and CPI meat by using the VEC model. Granger causality results indicated that there was a unidirectional relationship from PPI chicken meat to CPI meat, and independent relationships were found from PPI beef to CPI meat, CPI meat to PPI beef as well as CPI meat to PPI chicken meat. Based on the findings, the study recommends that policymakers, through evaluation of monetary policies, should continue maintaining a specific inflation target range as that will assist in stabilising meat prices in the economy. At the same time, protect meat producers against input price inflation using instruments such as input subsidies, grants, and the provision of modern technologies. / National Research Foundation (NRF)