South Africa Inflation Calculator

Buying power of R1 in 1994

This chart shows a calculation of buying power equivalence for R1 in 1994 (price index tracking began in 1957).

For example, if you started with R1, you would need to end with R5.31 in order to "adjust" for inflation (sometimes refered to as "beating inflation").

When R1 is equivalent to R5.31 over time, that means that the "real value" of a single South African rand decreases over time. In other words, a rand will pay for fewer items at the store.

This effect explains how inflation erodes the value of a rand over time. By calculating the value in 1994 dollars, the chart below shows how R1 is worth less over 32 years.

According to the OECD and the World Bank, each of these ZAR amounts below is equal in terms of what it could buy at the time:

This conversion table shows various other 1994 amounts in today's rand, based on the 430.68% change in prices:

How to calculate inflation rate for R1 since 1994

Our calculations use the following inflation rate formula to calculate the change in value between 1994 and today:

Then plug in historical CPI values. The South African CPI was 30.6897 in the year 1994 and 162.863262787897 in 2026:

R1 in 1994 has the same "purchasing power" or "buying power" as R5.31 in 2026.

To get the total inflation rate for the 32 years between 1994 and 2026, we use the following formula:

Plugging in the values to this equation, we get:

Data source & citation

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