23/04/2008 Note: There was a small error in Table 12. International Comparisons. The Percentage Change from the corresponding quarter of previous year for Germany should be 3.0%.


MARCH KEY FIGURES

	Dec Qtr 2007 to Mar Qtr 2008	Mar Qtr 2007 to Mar Qtr 2008
Weighted average of eight capital cities	% change	% change
Food	2.1	5.7
Alcohol and tobacco	1.0	3.8
Clothing and footwear	-2.4	-0.5
Housing	1.9	5.7
Household contents and services	-0.6	-0.7
Health	4.0	4.6
Transportation	1.9	6.8
Communication	-0.1	0.1
Recreation	-0.3	1.4
Education	5.2	4.3
Financial and insurance services	1.7	6.8
All groups	1.3	4.2
All groups excluding Housing and Financial and insurance services	1.1	3.5

All Groups, Quarterly change

Contribution to quarterly change, March quarter 2008

MARCH KEY POINTS


THE ALL GROUPS CPI

• rose 1.3% in the March quarter 2008, compared with a rise of 0.9% in the December quarter.
• rose 4.2% through the year to March quarter 2008.

OVERVIEW OF CPI MOVEMENTS

• The most significant contributors to the increase this quarter were automotive fuel (+5.4%), pharmaceuticals (+13.1%), house purchase (+1.7%), electricity (+6.0%), rents (+2.0%) and other financial services (+2.0%).
• The most significant offsetting decreases were for furniture (-3.6%), audio, visual and computing equipment (-5.8%), domestic holiday travel and accommodation (-1.4%) and accessories (-5.3%).

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE (QUARTER)	Release Date
June 2008	23 July 2008
September 2008	22 October 2008
December 2008	28 January 2009
March 2009	22 April 2009

ROUNDING

Any discrepancies between totals and sums of components in this publication are due to rounding.


CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

An article 'A Brief Explanation of the CPI' can be found in the Appendix on page 32 of this issue.

A new table, Table 16. CPI: Groups, Sub-groups and Expenditure Class, Points Contribution, by Capital Cities will be released on the ABS website from the March quarter 2008.


HISTORICAL WEIGHTING PATTERNS NOW AVAILABLE

As of the March quarter 2008, historical CPI weighting patterns have been made available. These can be found on the website in Consumer Price Index: Historical Weighting Patterns (1948 to 2005) (cat. no. 6431.0).


ABBREVIATIONS

ABS Australian Bureau of Statistics

CPI Consumer Price Index


LINKS TO OTHER PARTS OF THIS RELEASE ON THE WEBSITE

To access the 'Main Contributors to Change' data (on the website) use the link ' Main Contributors to Change' as shown below.

To access the 'Capital Cities Comparison' data (on the website) use the link 'Capital Cities Comparison' as shown below.

The standard way to access links to other parts of this or any release on the website is by selecting the required link from the links list in the box at the top left hand side of the 'Summary' page.

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact Lee Taylor on Canberra (02) 6252 6251 or the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.