The National Bureau of Statistics has said Nigeria’s headline inflation rate increased to 19.64 per cent on a year-on-year basis in July, the highest since 2005. The Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer, National Bureau of Statistics, Prince Semiu Adeniran, said this in the Consumer Price Index for July 2022 released by the bureau in Abuja on Monday. Giving a breakdown of the report in a statement, Adeniran said the CPI measures the average change over time in the prices of goods and services consumed by people for day-to-day living.
According to him, it is a core macroeconomic indicator used in the derivation of the inflation rate for policy, planning, and monitoring of an economy. Adeniran said the report showed that in July 2022, on a year–on–year basis, the headline inflation rate was 19.64 per cent. “This is 2.27 per cent points higher compared to the rate recorded in July 2021, which was 17.38 per cent. “This shows that the headline inflation rate increased in July 2022 when compared to the same month in the previous year of July 2021.
This means that in July 2022, the general price level was 2.26 per cent higher than in July 2021,’’ Adeniran said. He said increases were recorded in all Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose divisions that yielded the Headline Index. Adeniran said the increase in inflation was caused by an increase in food index attributed to the disruption in the supply of food products. The statistician-general also said the increase in inflation was caused by an increase in the cost of transportation arising from the higher cost of energy.
According to him, the increase in the inflation rate was also due to an increase in import costs as a result of currency depreciation, as well as a general increase in the cost of production. He said on a month-on-month basis, the headline inflation rate in July 2022 was 1.817 per cent, which was higher than the rate recorded in June 2022 at 1.816 per cent.
