Victor Ezeja
AdminConsumer Price Index (CPI) for October 2023 released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday has it that Nigeria’s headline inflation rate surged by a 0.61 percentage point from the 26.72 per cent that was recorded in September, to 27.33 per cent in October.
Prime Business Africa had reported KPMG’s recent forecast for the year as predicting that Nigeria’s headline inflation may rise to 30 per cent by December 2023 owing to the removal of subsidy on petrol and the unification of the foreign exchange market.
Major contributors to the increase in headline inflation were food and non-alcoholic beverages, housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuel, clothing and footwear, transport, and furnishings, and household equipment and maintenance.
Food inflation sustained its steady rise to peak at 31.52 per cent in October with NBS explaining that the increase in food inflation on a year-on-year basis was caused by increases in prices of bread and cereals, oil and fat, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fish, fruit, meat, vegetables and milk, cheese and eggs.
This is coming at a time when the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that Nigeria has plunged into an unacceptable threshold of food consumption resulting from a significant spike in staple food prices following increases in fuel prices, inflation and high cost of food production.
According to the FAO, over 26.5 million Nigerians including Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) will suffer acute food insecurity between June and August 2024. It stated that going into the lean season (June to August 2024) households may experience slight to moderate deterioration in food consumption which may plunge several states into the crisis phase.
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In the CPI released on Wednesday, the NBS disclosed that as of last month, the headline inflation rate increased to 27.33 per cent relative to the September 2023 headline inflation rate which was 26.72 per cent.
“Looking at the movement, the October 2023 headline inflation rate showed an increase of 0.61 percentage points when compared to the September 2023 headline inflation rate.
“Furthermore, on a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 6.24 percentage points higher compared to the rate recorded in October 2022, which was (21.09 per cent). This shows that the headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) increased in October 2023 when compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e. October 2022).”
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