Inflation rate at odds with real life experience
(CNS): The first quarter inflation rate for 2024 was 1.5% above the rate for the first three months of 2023 and around 0.3% higher than the rate at the end of the year, according to the Economics and Statistics Office. But with inflation running so high in the Cayman Islands over the last three years, even though the rate is now slowing, the lived experience for many families is that they remain in crisis.
The latest Consumer Price Index Report reveals some significant price increases and some minor declines. For example, the cost of education has risen, driven by a 10.9% increase in secondary private school fees. There was also a 7.4% increase in the cost of communication and an increase of more than 11% in rent. Utilities increased by 2.6%, healthcare by 2.5%, and food and drink by 1.1%
The cost of transportation declined by 2.7%. However, this was largely due to a drop in airfare, which has far less influence than other transport costs on the budget of ordinary families and therefore provided very little reprieve. Similarly, the 1.9% decline in the cost of restaurants and hotels will also have given very little comfort to ordinary families whose monthly bills have doubled over the last couple of years.
The 1.1% increase in food is also misleading as there was a 9.5% rise in the average price of some food products. Cooking oils increased by 8.9%, sugar and snacks by almost 6%, and vegetables by 2.4%. Fruit and dairy were the only food categories that dropped in price.
While families juggle paying their ever-growing bills, very few have seen their earnings increase by anything like the amount needed to match runaway inflation since the pandemic. In 2021, inflation reached a peak of over 12%, and while the rate of inflation has slowed since then, it has continued to increase at that peak level quarter after quarter.
- Fascinated
- Happy
- Sad
- Angry
- Bored
- Afraid
Real inflation is closer to 15%.
Big Mac index shows true inflation.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/consumer/article-13426595/McDonalds-fans-stunned-burger-fries-cost-10-years-ago-compared-now.html
Anyone that believes the Gov’t bureaucrats and their phony stats have their heads in the sand.
Gov’ts (world over) don’t care about the public. Only more money and more power.
Rem to pay those taxes / import duties etc. 😉
The devil is in the details….mysterious line called imputed rate of inflation for homeowners was ticked in at around 2-3% percent whereas rents and home repairs were up 11% thereabouts. Where does one calculated the imputed rates of inflation to homeowners? (This is an issue globally) I’m willing to wager if you strip out that strange item and replace it with the rent only measurement we end up smack on the 3.5% inflation mark.
How is it that I can buy items from Walmart, target and Amazon at retail prices, import them myself and still land them here for 50% of local cost? My time spent on importing is now 1/5th of what it used to be now that all the admin and payments can be done on line. It’s a breeze compared to what it used to be.
All the major grocery chains and ALT are making a killing off a captive market, and with a growing number of people that simply don’t care what they pay no matter the cost grocers and consumer goods vendors can charge what they want. And shopping local typically doesn’t give you any benefits on small items as some overseas vendors have replaced defective items for free, except I pay a small shipping fee when combined with other orders coming in. Support local business you say, well I do buy local eggs and some produce. But some local produce is price inflated and of poor quality, and remember farmers do receive subsidies in the form of duty concessions by way of a farmer’s licence on animal feed and anything to be used in horticulture. Why should I support local extortion if I can import items for a steal?
Or a reasonable price
don’t expect anything from cig….
remember…cig are the ones who banned uber here to protect the rip-off taxi cartel.
cig are the ones that prevent walmart from coming here to protect local store owners..
cig are the ones that prevent any airline from under cutting the loss making, rip-off cayman airways…
cig are the ones that limit people from using solar technology
welcome to wonderland.
I know the economists have their way of calculating this stuff but it never feels right. Bananas went from .99 to 1.99 that’s 100% inflation. A box of strawberries is $10 and used to be $7 so that’s 50%.
I know that’s only two examples out of a large basket but I just don’t see it. Our food bill for the month used to consistently be about $1000 and now it’s consistently $1200 so that’s 20%.
Power bill was about 250 and now 300 so that’s 25%.
Internet and cell phones up about 10%.
When the mortgage unlocks from 4% and goes to 7% that’ll be a 40% jump in housing.
Home insurance went up 50 percent last year and is going up another 30 this year.
Elementary school fees up 16%
So exactly where TF they came up with 1% inflation or whatever the hell the number was it can’t be right.
ESO aren’t allowed to report the real deal because that would make the elected officials look worst.
I’m not quite that cynical but I think the basket of goods they use is bull. At the end of the day if you made say $100k in 2022 and had $30k left at the end of the year and then made $100k in 2023 and didn’t change your lifestyle and only had $10k left then your life went from costing $70k to costing $90k. That’s a 28% bump and I think that’s what most people would say it feels like we’re living through.
agree with most of what you say except on one point. cell phones, computers, tech… the cpi measure is like for like not iPhone 11 for iPhone 12 etc.. as a result tech almost always drags down prices in cpi albeit its not a large weighting.
Fair enough but that’s flawed. It shouldn’t be one year iPhone 12 and the next 13 and somehow those are two different products. It should be “top of the line, current apple smartphone in year 1 and again in year 2”
None of the elected representatives care. The middle class is shaking and moving towards collapsing.
The elected reps care deeply about the entrenched business owners doing the fleecing, and slipping them support to look after their rackets. There is no consumer protection agency or laws representing the public consumer. Every suggestion form in the Cayman Islands Government is constructed to identify the complainants with “who’s asking” identifiers…full name, email, address, then a box for what will be an unactioned query. Even the police work this way.
Yup.
They also grab IP addresses from social media, to ID critics.
As you wish..
This. Exactly this.
You ain’t complaining about nothing without being asked who you are so you can be blacklisted. Doesn’t matter whether it’s Burger King or immigration.
If you want to complain you sure as shit better hope your family name carries enough weight to bust through that one.
Anyone can see the US money supply chart…. they are printing 1 trillion every 100 days. Because we are anchored to the USD that printing in the US has for effect to steal from the savings of those on islands who have USD or KYD savings. Money printing is a cheap and dirty way for politicians to do what they want to do without raising taxes, and the cost (inflation) is spread over an entire populations.
Wish we could go back to the days of honest hard-money… like gold-backed (or now bitcoin-backed) USD. Would really prevent the US government from printing like mad the way it is now.
it called GREED! NOT INFLATION …LOL
The most expensive place in the world to live keeps getting more expensive.
Worse: having to pay to get things done three times is now part of the skill and competency gap underwritten by an expansive period of government-backed $6.50/hr serfdom and laziness that rebels against QC, transparency, and accountability.
not even close to the most expensive place in the world if you include taxes.
What the ESO needs to show us is the net increase in the cost of living as compared to the net increase in salaries for the median income families.
In other words, normal people who don’t get to negotiate their salaries and benefits package, what impact has the total inflation over the last 5 years had on their lives.
This comes down the same point I have made about stats, particularly CIG stats on numerous other comments… stats are unreliable and useless based on poor or selective data, never reflecting the reality.
Insurance of all types keeps going up up up.
Insurance is histories largest pyramid scheme & scam, backed by the governments, banks & financial industry players.
Unfortunately that’s the actuarial reality of living in the Tropics in a changing world, where extreme calamity claims have become more regular. We are situated in the Caribbean hurricane belt, even if we are a rare claimant. We should note that some parts of coastal USA can’t get insurance anymore. Without collateral insurance, bank mortgages get called, and that’s the end of the show. One big claim – even somewhere else – could radically change the habitation profile of Cayman forever. It looks like we are just waiting for that to happen, rather than getting ahead of the calamity risk with a state/FCO-backed domestic insurance program to spread/offset some of the longer term portfolio risk. It’s a very worrisome topic.
The same issue is occurring in most countries. Inflation is dropping but prices remain up.
Yup-that’s why I can’t wait to get off this island after 15 years. Owning a home has also become exorbitant with insurance and maintenance costs skyrocketing. Salaries are not keeping up at all.
To be clear, even if the rate of increase is slowing, and it very much depends on the basket of goods ESO uses, the bottom line is that prices continue to increase
If government is going to continue overspending, at least build a light rail system.
or do anything at all to show where the $1bn+ has gone….
We don’t have a billion to spend. 500 million goes on salaries and the civil service every year. So what is actually left is barely anything once we’ve paid for the welfare state that is 90% of caymanians being employed by the government or one of its entities.
Where do you get 90%? It’s closer to 10%. There are supposedly only 4,500 CIG workers, many of them expats. That’s <20% of our 23,470 registered voters, which is about half of the total Caymanian complement.
That’s CIG. You’ve ignored every public school, every turtle centre, every cayman airways, every CIMA and CSX etc.
The fact of the matter is this. 90% or close to of every working age caymanian that IS working. Is employed by CIG directly, or one of its supported tentacles.
Can you provide a source for that statistic so that I can learn more?
Inflation is the hidden tax governments impose upon the populace by irresponsible and needless overspending.
Sound familiar JuJu? Anyone?
you can’t trust cig to produce honest realistic stats on inflation…
reality is cig(past and present) over last 25 years has done little to nothing about tackling cost of living and cost of doing business here. any comment mrs governor?
cig is funded largely by money laundering fees and a property boom based on similar illicit money. house of card soon falls…
Let’s go to a gold backed currency and dump the US Dollar before it. ollapses completely.
yea Gaddafi tried to get the get the whole of Africa to do that, ask him how that went. best we can hope for is that BRICS dont something along that line and follow suit thereafter.
Let’s be like Switzerland.
Because corporations used inflation as a thinly veiled cover to raise margins, but those increases haven’t been reversed.
Wages did not rise to compensate and now people are feeling the crunch.
I look forward to record earnings and dividends for the haves. And to the have-nots, may the odds be ever in your favour.
Watermelons were on sale for $18 the other day. Everyday low prices,eh?
We have regular inflation to contend with, plus the ridiculous mark-ups that some local vendors seem to think they can get away with the smokescreen that it creates.
The unfortunate thing is. they are getting away with it!
The biggest contributor to inflation is the price of housing. And in Cayman, people are causing the housing shortage by taking properties off the long term rental market to rent them exclusively on a short term basis via airbnb. Some are doing this with multiple properties as a business. This should be stopped by law. Renting a spare room is fine, but what is actually happening is now having an economic impact on the island as a whole. If the government wants to sit on its hands and not stop this, deal with what you have allowed to happen! But hey, let’s fly to Barbados!!!!
To some a long term rental property is similar to a spare room but I understand your point.
Consider that uber was banned to protect the taxi cartel yet their fares remain extortionary.
Property owners have higher mortgages/insurance etc. as well. It’s hard to blame them for trying to survive in this inflationary environment by offering short term rentals.
Truth is everyone is feeling the pinch except our elected officials who are paid to very well to find solutions.
Theres a reason why many countries and cities are banning Airbnb.
Priced out of Paradise!
Well said! Article could have also included car insurance prices has gone up and car repairs are outrageous. Shopping buying in bulk at CostUless helps but still tough. Don’t think supply chain disruptions are still the reason anymore pandemic too long ago.
Supply chains are flowing freely. This is greed.. plain and simple! In the US, Target has literally lowered the prices of 1,500 items because the consumer has now become sensitive to the higher prices. They have shown their cards… greed!