Jumoke Olasunkanmi
Recent data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has shown a persistent increase in headline inflation rate, revealing a 0.61 percent increase in the space of one month.
This is despite promises from President Bola Tinubu who had in July declared a state of emergency over the food insecurity crisis and pledged to address food inflation.
Tinubu’s spokesperson at the time, Dele Alake, stated: “In the immediate term, we intend to deploy some savings from the fuel subsidy removal into the Agricultural sector, focusing on revamping the agricultural sector.”
Contrary to these assurances, NBS October 2023 report showed that headline inflation rate increased to 27.33 percent in October, from 26.72 in September.
From a year-on-year basis, headline inflation rate rose by 6.24 percent. This means that the current inflation rate of 27.33 percent, stood at 21.09 percent in the previous year.
Similarly, food inflation rose by 7.80 percent on a year-on-year basis from 23.72 percent in October 2022, to 31.52 percent in October 2023.
However, food inflation rate reduced by 0.54 percent as it stands at 1.91 percent in October 2023, from 2.45 percent in September 2023.
NBS noted that this decline is as a result of fall in price of fruits, oil and fats, coffee, tea and cocoa, as well as bread and cereal.
Also, core inflation, which refers to all items except farm produce and energy, stood at 22.58 percent in October 2023, a 5.12 increase from the 17.46 percent recorded in October 2022, with the highest increase seen in road transportation, medical services, air transportation, actual and imputed rentals for housing and pharmaceutical products.
Similar to food inflation, core inflation recorded a 0.83 decline on a month-on-month basis from 2.22 percent in September to 1.39 percent on October 2023.
