The nation’s inflation rate which is fast becoming irrelevant in assessing the well-being of consumers’responses to prices of goods, particularly food items may have broken the mouthed successive reduction for the past eight months as current figures show prices of staple food items have begun on the rising trend.
Consequently, bread and cereals, meat, fish, other food items accounted for rise in food inflation in December, 2021 to 17.37 per cent, as headline inflation rose to 15.63 per cent.
Statistician-General of the Federation, Mr Simon Harry, gave the figure on Monday in Abuja at a news conference to announce the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for December 2021.
Harry said there was a 0.16 per cent increase from the 17.21 per cent recorded for food inflation in November, 2021
The NBS said: “The consumer price index, (CPI) which measures inflation increased by 15.63 percent (year-on-year) in December 2021.
“This is 0.13 percent points lower than the rate recorded in December 2020 (15.75) percent.”
The document explained that this is showing a slowing down in the rate when compared to the corresponding period of 2020.
Increases were recorded in all Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) divisions that yielded the Headline index said NBS.
According to the document, urban inflation rate increased by 16.17 percent (year-on-year) in December 2021 from 16.33 percent recorded in December 2020 while the rural inflation rate increased by 15.11 percent in December 2021 from 15.20 percent in December 2020.
NBS said the twelve-month year-on-year average percentage change for the urban index is 17.52 percent in December 2021.
This, it said, is lower than the rate reported in November 17.55 (percent), while the corresponding twelve-month (month-on-month) average percentage change for rural index inflation rate in December 2021 stood at 16.40 percent from 16.42 percent in November 2021.
On food, the bureau said: “The composite food sub-index rose by 17.37 percent in December 2021 down by 2.19 percent points when compared to 19.56 percent in December 2020.
“This rise in the food sub-index was caused by increases in prices of bread and cereals, food product e.g meat, fish, potatoes, yam and another tuber, soft drinks and fruit.
“On a month-on-month basis, the food sub-index increased by 2.19 percent in December 2021, up by 1.12 percent points from 1.07 percent recorded in November 2021.”
The document noted that in December 2021, all items inflation on year on year basis was highest in Ebonyi (18.71%); Kogi (18.37%) and Bauchi (17.81%) while Kwara (12.32); Edo (13.46%) and Cross River (13.93%) recorded the slowest rise in headline Year on Year inflation.
