Nigeria’s statistics bureau has announced a new inflation rate of 16.63% on Monday. The latest rate was for the last month of 2021.
Prior to December when the rate climbed to the latest digit, it had maintained a constant decline between April and November last year until it upped by 0.23% in the last month from 15.50% the previous month.
Statistician-General of the Federation, Simon Harry, on Monday at a press meeting in Abuja said: “It may interest you to note that this trend has been broken by the slight change in the month of December 2021 as the inflation rate for all items (Headline Inflation) for the month increased to 15.63 percent, year-on-year. This trend clearly shows an increase from 15.40 percent recorded in the month of November 2021 to 15.63 percent in December 2021. This is 0.23 percent points higher than the rate recorded in November 2021.”
He gave some hope that even though the December figure was high, it still was a better picture from what obtained in December 2020 when it was 15.75%
He suggested that the change and reversal from the eight consecutive months of decline might have been caused by the increase in prices of goods and services driven by increased demand during the month under review, which was a festive season.
On a month-on-month basis, the NBS said that the headline index increased by 1.82 percent in December, 0.74 percent higher than the rate recorded in November, which was 1.08 percent.
“The urban inflation rate increased to 16.17 percent (year-on-year) in December from 16.33 percent recorded in December 2020, while the rural inflation rate increased to 15.11 percent in December, from 15.20 percent recorded in December 2020, which was lower by 0.09 percent points.
He also noted that the composite food sub-index rose to 17.37 percent in December, which was lower by 2.19 percentage points when compared to 19.56 percent recorded in December 2020.
“On a month-on-month basis, the food sub-index increased to 2.19 percent in December 2021, higher by 1.12 percent points from 1.07 percent recorded in November 2021,” Harry added.
The NBS also disclosed that core inflation which excludes the prices of volatile agricultural produce stood at 13.87 percent in December 2021, which was higher by 2.50 percent when compared with 11.37 percent recorded in December 2020.
On a month-on-month basis, the core sub-index increased to 1.12 percent in December 2021. This was lower by 0.13 percent when compared with 1.26 percent recorded in November 2021.
