The National Treasury has assessed the impact of rebasing and re-weighting the CPI, and the changes that will need to be made to the Government's Inflation-Linked Bonds.
From January 2009, the new headline CPI - all urban areas (primary and secondary) will replace the old CPI - all items for metropolitan areas. The Terms and Conditions of the Government inflationlinked debt will therefore be amended to reflect the relevant changes.
Statistics South Africa is to provide historic data of the rebased CPI (with 2008 = 100) from December 2008 backwards. The National Treasury will thus also replace existing index data for calculation purposes with the new rebased data until December 2008, and further with the new rebased and reweighed CPI from January 2009.
For the calculation of the month-on-month adjustment for inflation purposes, the index number for the (new) CPI - all urban areas for January 2009 over the (old) CPI - all items for metropolitan areas for December 2008 will apply.
These base indices are calculated in such a way that the capital value of the bonds is the same before and after the indices were rebased.
For more media enquiries please contact Thoraya Pandy on 012 315 5944 or 082 416 8416.