Bloomberg News reports that the cost of a basket of goods in Bloomberg’s SA Shisa Nyama Index, designed to show the price of a traditional backyard barbecue in townships and rural areas, accelerated to 15% in June from a year earlier.

That compares with 12% in May. The acceleration reverses a three-month slowdown in price gains and is a blow for South Africans struggling with incessant power outages and a moribund economy. Restaurant owners such as Khunou Nyakale, who runs two shisa nyama restaurants in Soweto, haven’t been able to pass on the costs of items such as onions, which rose 97% in June, to consumers, prompting eateries to fire workers. Crunching data from the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity group, Bloomberg’s index tracks the prices of some of the key ingredients in a shisa nyama – cornmeal, onions, carrots, tomatoes, curry powder, salt, frozen chicken portions, beef and wors. According to Statistics SA, food inflation slowed to 12% in May, while the headline number eased to a 13-month low of 6.3%. Still, the measure has been above the SA Reserve Bank’s target range since May last year and that will prompt the bank to keep monetary policy tight for longer, according to Governor Kganyago.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Mpho Hlakudi at Fin24

Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page