According to Statistics New Zealand's latest food price index fruits and vegetables are getting increasingly expensive even though the global recession saw a widespread fall in the prices of the commodities.

For the whole year there was an overall increase of 9.5% in the prices by the end of January 2009 and for the month of January it was a 0.8% increase. In January itself the prices of fruit and vegetables rose by 3.6% with the prices of tomatoes going by almost 50% of its price in December, kiwifruit being 48.2% higher and mandarins higher by
37.3%.

Individually, the increase in prices for the whole year, has been, grocery food 10 percent, meat, poultry and fish 11.8 percent, fruit and vegetables 13.4 percent, restaurant meals and ready to eat food 6 percent, and non-alcoholic beverages 6.9 percent.

The most significant increase was the 20.8% increase in the prices of bread and a 6.5 percent increase in ready to eat food.

Never the less, prices of certain fruit and vegetables did see a fall in the month of January from the December prices, like apples were down by 11.3% and potatoes by
7.4%. The prices of meat, poultry and fish also saw a fall in January, down 0.6% as the price of lamb dropped to 9.6%.