Wellington, Oct 13 (IANS): Food prices were 8.3 per cent higher in September 2022 compared with September 2021 in New Zealand, the country's statistics department Stats NZ said on Thursday.

The annual increase was also 8.3 per cent in August 2022, the highest since July 2009, Xinhua news agency quoted Stats NZ as saying.

In September 2022, the annual increase was due to rises across all the broad food categories measured, with grocery food being the largest contributor to this movement, it said.

"Increasing prices for yoghurt, two-minute noodles, and tomato-based pasta sauce were the largest drivers within grocery food," consumer prices manager Katrina Dewbery said.

The second-largest contributor to the annual movement was fruit and vegetables. The items within this group that influenced this movement the most were capsicums, tomatoes, and broccoli.

Monthly food prices were 0.4 percent higher in September 2022 compared with August 2022. After adjusting for seasonal effects, they were up 0.9 per cent.

Fruit and vegetables fell 0.1 per cent, but after seasonal adjustment rose 3.9 per cent.

"This seasonal movement for fruit and vegetables indicates that based off previous patterns a larger fall in fruit and vegetables for the September month is more typical," Dewbery said.

"This helps explain why the overall seasonally adjusted movement is higher than the unadjusted increase."