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01 Food and non-alcoholic beverages

01.1 Food

Description

14.15 This component comprises the following groups of expenditure:

• food and non-alcoholic drinks purchased by households for their own consumption from retail and service outlets, direct sellers and non-profit organisations such as school canteens;

• food withdrawn from the inventories of unincorporated enterprises for consumption by the owner's household;

• food provided to employees as part of compensation of employees (payments in kind); and

• significant items of food produced by the household for its own consumption, such as fruit, vegetables and chicken eggs.

Sources and methods

14.17 The periodic Retail Census provides the primary benchmarks for estimates of food and non-alcoholic drinks purchased by households for their own consumption from retail and service outlets. Other elements included in the benchmark are: sales by manufacturing and wholesale establishments; sales by organisations selling directly to the public; goods withdrawn from inventories for own use; and self-supplied food. The latest benchmark is moved forward using data from the monthly Survey of Retail Trade.

14.18 The value of self-supplied food is based on estimates of the amount of food produced for own consumption from Home Production of Selected Foodstuffs, Australia (Cat. no. 7110.0), extrapolated using movements in the retail food series.

Volume estimates

14.19 Current price estimates of purchases of food by Australian residents in Australia are revalued using the relevant component of the CPI.

14.20 Current price estimates of purchases of food by Australian residents overseas are revalued using a composite index of overseas CPIs.

14.21 Chain volume estimates of purchases of food are derived by aggregating the elemental volume components of the above.