Nigeria’s inflation soars to 17-year high at 20.77% in September

By Onome Amuge

Nigeria’s inflation rate rose for the eighth consecutive month to 20.77 percent in September, from 20.52 percent recorded in the previous month of August 2022, according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.

According to the report which measured the rate of changes in prices of goods and services, the inflation rate, the highest since September 2005, was driven by a consecutive uptick in the food and core index, underpinned by increases across all classification of individual consumption by purpose (COICOP) divisions that yielded the headline index.

The rising inflation is defying the Central Bank of Nigeria’s monetary policy tightening that began in May 2022, which has seen the Monetary Policy Committee hike the benchmark interest rate for three consecutive meetings by 400 basis points to 15.5 percent.

On a month-on-month basis, the headline inflation rate was 1.36 percent, 0.41 percent lower than the 1.77 percent rate recorded in August 2022.

The report further showed that the urban inflation rate jumped to 21.25 percent in the month under review against 17.19 percent recorded in the corresponding period of 2021, while the rural inflation rate hit 20.32 percent.

The national statistics agency noted that the food inflation rate rose to 23.34 percent on a year-on-year basis, marking another consecutive uptick from 23.12 percent recorded in August 2022. This was attributed to increases in prices of bread and cereals, food products, potatoes, yams and other tubers, oils and fats.

Meanwhile, the “All items less farm produce’’ or Core inflation, which excludes the prices of volatile agricultural produce, stood at 17.60 percent in September 2022, up from 17.2 percent recorded in the previous month.

Notably, the highest increases were recorded in prices of gas, liquid fuel, solid fuel, passenger transport by road and passenger transport by air.