After remaining stuck above 5% for four whole years to February 2017, it has now been in the 4.0-4.5% Page 4 of 9  range for more than a year. True, the 2016 rand recovery did favour the decline in both headline and core inflation, yet the trend persisted even as the rand experienced volatility in 2017-18.
Indeed, of the last 24 monthly consumer price index (CPI) releases, 14 came out below the consensus expectation of economists polled by Bloomberg, versus only 3 that came out higher. Why did market economists – and indeed, the SARB’s own econometric models – fail to anticipate the extent of this inflation slowdown?