Inflation Rises to 33.95%

James Emejo in Abuja

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) which measures the rate of change in prices of goods and commodities further increased to 33.95 per cent in May compared to 33.69 per cent the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Saturday.

The NBS attributed the 0.26 per cent uptick in the headline index to rising energy, food and commodity prices.

According to the CPI report for May, year-on-year, inflation was 11.54 per cent higher compared to 22.41 per cent in May 2023.

Conversely, month-on- month, headline inflation declined to 2.14 per cent compared to 2.29 per cent in April.

Year on year, food inflation hit 40.66 per cent in May, which was an increase of 15.84 per cent compared to 24.82 per cent recorded in the corresponding period of 2023.

On annualised basis, the rise in the food index was attributed to increases in prices of the semovita, oatflake, yam flour prepackage, garri, bean, (under bread and cereals class), irish potatoes, yam, water yam (under potatoes, yam and other tubers class).

Other contributors include palm oil, vegetable oil (under oil and fat), stockfish, mudfish, crayfish (under fish class), beef head, chicken-live, pork head, and bush meat (under meat class).

The NBS pointed out that month-on-month food inflation dropped to 2.28 per cent compared to 2.50 per cent in April, following a fall in the rate of increase in the average prices of palm oil, groundnut oil yam, irish potatoes, cassava tuber wine, bournvita, milo, and nescafe.

Core inflation year on year rose to27.04 per cent in May compared to 19.83 per cent in 2023.

Details later…