Measured against this benchmark, South Africa did not do well in recent years. It is true that the average rate of inflation stayed around a level of about 14 per cent for more than twenty years from 1972 to 1992 and has now been kept below 10 per cent per annum for almost 5 years.
At the level of 8 per cent established over the twelve months up to September 1997, the most recent available statistic, the South African rate of inflation is, however, still about three times as high as the current rates of inflation in our major international trading partners.