CPI is the headline inflation number used by the Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Committee to set the repo rate. February's CPI falling back into the government's target range of under 6% (but over 3% since a little inflation is seen as economically beneficial) and the Reserve Bank's confidence that it will stay there for the next two years resulted in this week's 0.5% rate cut.
CPI is also widely used by the general business community in contracts. For instance, when engineering firms pitch for long-term construction projects, they conventionally quote their prices as escalating by CPI as the work progresses.
But CPI is only one of dozens of economic indicators produced by Statistics South Africa.
