South Africa's recorded murder rate reached a new post-1994 low in the past year -- but still came to 18,487 people killed.

"Government is concerned that ... the levels of crime continue to be unacceptably high," Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said in the Pretoria.

"We would have wanted to see a more drastic decrease."

Nqakula was speaking at the release of crime statistics for the period from April 2007 and March this year.

The latest figures show that all the country's contact crimes have come down in the past year by an overall 6.4 percent.

These crimes included murder, attempted murder, rape, assault GBH, and common assault, common robbery, robbery with aggravating circumstances and indecent assault.

Attempted murder was down by 7.5 percent with 18,795 cases being reported or a crime ratio of 39.3 incidents per 100,000 of the population, down from 42.5 incidents in 2006/2007.

In 2007/2008, 439.1 people out of 100,000 were assaulted with the intention to do grievous bodily harm -- which translated into 210,104 cases reported to police.

Common assault was down to 198,049 cases reported or 413.9 per 100,000 of the population. This showed a decrease of 6.6 percent compared to the previous year's figures of 210,057 cases reported.

Common robbery had a 9.5 percent decline, the biggest decrease in contact crimes, with 64,985 cases reported or 135.8 incidents out of 100,000 people.

Robbery with aggravating circumstance was down from 126,558 reported cases in 2006/2007 to 118,312 cases reported in 2007/2008.

But a breakdown of the aggravated robbery figures showed that carjacking was up to 14,201 cases reported compared to the 13,599 cases last year. Truck hijacking was up to 1245 from 892 cases last year.

There were also 1720 more cases of robbery at residential premises, with 14,481 cases being reported and robbery at non-residential premises were up to 9862 cases reported from 6689 cases in 2006/2007.

Incidents of cash-in-transit robberies came down to 395 cases reported in the past year but 144 bank robberies were recorded, 15 more than the year before.

Rape and indecent assault statistics were only presented for the nine months ending in December, since the law on rape changed in that month to include male rape.

During the period 36,190 rapes were recorded, or 75.6 cases per 100,000 of the population and indecent assault was slightly down to 6763 cases reported, compared to the 6812 cases in the previous year.

Although contact crimes have reduced, the trend that perpetrators and victims were known to each other has continued.

Police assistant commissioner Chris de Kock said: "This decrease shows that something is slowly but surely changing in society."

He said the consumption of alcohol still played a major role in the instances of social crimes.

Nqakula and police top-brass are holding talks in Pretoria on Tuesday to see what new strategies they can come up with to further bring down crime.