Nigeria’s inflation rate has increased significantly from 19.64% in July 2022 to 20.52% in August 2022, this represents the highest rate since September 2005,according to data tracked by Nairalytics, a web portal that publishes Nigeria’s historical macroeconomic data.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which just released its Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, revealed that in August 2022, Nigeria’s CPI increased by 20.52% year over year. In comparison to the 1.82% gain seen the month before, the index increased by 1.77% month over month.
Food inflation, a closely watched indicator, increased to 23.12% in August 2022, up from 22.02% the previous month by 1.1%. In July, food inflation was 1.98% month on month, 0.07% lower than the previous month’s rate of 2.04%.
Also, the urban inflation rate stood at 20.95%, which is 3.36% higher compared to 17.59 % recorded in August 2021. The rural inflation rate in August 2022 was 20.12% on a year-on-year basis, 3.69% higher compared to 16.43% recorded in August 2021.
The NBS claims that rises in the cost of bread and cereals, food items, potatoes, yams, and other tubers, fish, meat, oil, and fat were to blame for the rise in food inflation.
Meanwhile, the average annual rate of food inflation for the twelve-month period ending August 2022 over the previous twelve-month average was 19.02%, which was a 1.48% decline from the average annual rate of change recorded in August 2021 (20.50%).
The Core inflation, which excludes the prices of volatile agricultural produce stood at 17.20% in August 2022 on a year-on-year basis; up by 0.94% when compared to 16.26% recorded in July 2022.
On a month-on-month basis, the core inflation rate was 1.59% in August 2022. This was down by 0.17% when compared to 1.75% recorded in July 2022.
Notably, the highest increases were recorded in prices of Gas, Liquid fuel, Solid fuel, Passenger transport by road, Passenger transport by Air, fuel and lubricants for personal transport equipment, Cleaning, Repair and Hire of clothing.
In August 2022, all items inflation rate on a year-on-year basis was highest in Ebonyi (25.33%), Rivers (23.70%), Bayelsa (23.01%), while Jigawa (17.30%), Borno (17.56%) and Zamfara (18.04%) recorded the slowest rise in headline Year-on-Year inflation.
Food inflation on a year-on-year basis was highest in Kwara (30.80%), Ebonyi (28.06%) and Rivers (27.64%), while Jigawa (17.77%), Zamfara (18.79%) and Oyo (19.80%) recorded the slowest rise on year-on-year food inflation.
