• Honourable Members, you may be surprised to know that almost 2.0 percentage points of the 5.5 percent inflation outcome at July end was driven by higher kava prices. Even though kava constitutes only 2.5 percent of our Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket, it contributed substantially to the inflation out-turn.
As a result, while yaqona farmers benefitted from the high prices, kava consumers had to fork out significantly more for their favourite brown label drink as prices almost doubled by July and rose three-fold by January this year. • For those of us who don’t drink kava, our inflation was effectively around 3 percent.