Nigeria's Inflation Rate Jumps to 33.95% on Rising Food Costs

As food costs continue to rise, Nigeria's inflation rate increases to 33.95%.

Nigeria's inflation rate surges to 33.95% in May, driven by rising food and non-alcoholic beverage prices. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports a 0.26% increase from April, with food inflation reaching 40.66%. Despite a slight slowdown in month-on-month inflation, prices continue to rise, fueled by increases in bread, cereals, meat, and oil prices.

Nigeria's inflation rate increased to 33.95 percent in May, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), as food and non-alcoholic beverage prices kept rising.

This was disclosed by NBS in its consumer price index (CPI) report released on Saturday.

The rate of inflation in April was 33.69 percent.

“Looking at the movement, the May 2024 headline inflation rate showed an increase of 0.26% points when compared to the April 2024 headline inflation rate,” NBS said.

“On a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 11.54% points higher compared to the rate recorded in May 2023, which was 22.41%.”

According to the report, the headline inflation rate in May 2024 decreased slightly to 2.14% on a month-on-month basis, down from 2.29% in April 2024. This indicates a slower rate of increase in the average price level in May compared to the previous month.

In simpler terms, the rate at which prices rose in May was lower than the rate at which they rose in April. This means that while prices are still increasing, the rate of increase is slowing down.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages topped the list of the top five headline inflation drivers, accounting for 17.59 percent of the total.

Housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels come in second and third, respectively, with 5.68 percent.

The remaining categories include furniture, home appliances, and maintenance at 1.71 percent, followed by apparel and footwear at 2.60 percent and transportation at 2.21 percent.

The urban inflation rate increased to 36.34 percent in May on an annual basis, according to NBS, “which was 12.61% points higher compared to the 23.74% recorded in May 2023.”

According to NBS, food inflation increased to 40.66 percent in May, which is 15.84 percentage points higher than the 24.82 percent recorded in the same month the previous year.

The bureau stated that items under the bread and cereals class, such as semovita, oatflake, yam flour prepackaged, garri, beans, etc., and the potatoes, yam, and other tubers class, which includes Irish potatoes, yam, water yam, etc., contributed to the annual increase in the food inflation rate.

Additionally, contributors are the following: beef head, chicken-live, pig head, and bush meat (under meat class); palm oil, vegetable oil, etc. (under oil and fat); stockfish, mudfish, crayfish, etc. (under fish class).

The NBS also reported that May's month-over-month food inflation rate was 2.28 percent, which is a 0.22 percent drop from the 2.50 percent rate seen in April.