Australia statistician overstated child care costs, but no impact on CPI

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's official statistician has been overestimating the cost of child care in its consumer price index for the past year, but the error will not result in any changes to overall CPI inflation.

Measures of underlying inflation - the trimmed mean and weighted median - watched closely by the Reserve Bank of Australia were unaffected by the errors, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said.

In a media release on its website, the ABS said it had made an error in estimating the effect of government subsidies for child care, which took effect in July 2023.

As a result, in the September quarter CPI report the published child care index was 5.8%, or 9.5 index points, higher than it should have been at 163.0. Annual growth in care costs should have been 10.7%, rather than 12.1%.

Child care makes up only 0.9% of the CPI basket, so the error meant the level of the overall CPI was just 0.04% higher in the quarter than it should have been.

The series will be corrected in the October monthly CPI due out on Nov. 27 but will make no difference to the already published quarterly inflation rate, the ABS said.

It noted the CPI was widely used for indexation purposes and revisions could create uncertainty and confusion.

(Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

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