Inflation rate increases to 22.79% in June 2023, says NBS

National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Nigeria’s inflation rate rose to 22.79per cent in the month of June 2023, representing a 0.38 percentage points increase from 22.41 per cent recorded in the previous month.

Nigeria’s inflation has been maintaining an uptrend in the last six months, following a brief decline recorded in December 2022.

On a year-on-year basis, the Headline inflation rate was 4.19percentage points higher compared to the rate recorded in June 2022, which was 18.60per cent.

This shows that the Headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) increased in June 2023 when compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., June 2022).

Food and non-alcoholic beverages (11.81 per cent) led the list of items that contributed to inflation based on the divisional level.

Housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuel followed with 3.81 per cent, while communication at 0.15 per cent was the least on the list.

The uptick in the inflation rate was largely driven by the food index, as food inflation accelerated to 25.25 per cent in the review month compared to 24.82 per cent recorded in May 2023.

On a month-on-month basis, the Food inflation rate in June 2023 was 2.40per cent, this was 0.21 percentage points higher compared to the rate recorded in May 2023 (2.19 per cent).

The rise in Food inflation on a year-on-year basis was caused by increases in prices of oil and fat, bread and cereals, fish, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fruits, meat, vegetable, milk, cheese, and eggs.

In the same vein, core inflation increased to 20.27% from 20.06 per cent in the prior month.

The increase in the core index is on the back of the federal government’s petrol subsidy removal announcement, which saw the price of petrol increase from an average of N185/ltr to N500 per litre.

On a month-on-month basis, the core inflation rate was 1.74 per cent in June 2023. It stood at 1.81% in May 2023, down by 0.07 per cent.

The highest increases were recorded in prices of passenger transport by air, gas, vehicle spare parts, liquid fuel, fuels, and lubricants for personal transport equipment, medical services, passenger transport by road, etc.