The latest update by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), shows a 19.64% increase in Nigeria’s headline inflation rate in July.
The alarming new rate, which came on a year-on-year basis, was announced by Prince Semiu Adeniran, the Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer, NBS, through the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for July 2022 released in Abuja on Monday.
Speaking on the report, Adeniran said that the CPI measures the average change over time in the prices of goods and services consumed by people for day-to-day living, and it confirmed an uptick in inflation rate.
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“This is 2.27% points higher compared to the rate recorded in July 2021, which was 17.38%.
“This shows that the headline inflation rate increased in July 2022 when compared to the same month in the previous year of July 2022. This means that in July 2022, the general price level was 2.26 per cent higher than in July 2021,’’ he said.
He said there were increments in all Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) divisions that yielded the Headline index. He attributed the inflation to an increase in the food index which was created by the disruption in the food products supply chain.
Adeniran also attributed the increase in inflation to the rise in the cost of transportation which is as a result of the high cost of energy.
He said 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.
“On a month-on-month basis, the headline inflation rate in July 2022 was 1.817%, which was higher than the rate recorded in June 2022 at 1.816%.
“The percentage change in the average CPI for the twelve months ending July 2022 over the average of the CPI for the previous twelve months period was 16.75%.
“This is showing a 0.46% increase compared to 16.30% recorded in July 2021,’’ he said.
The Statistician General also noted that the composite food index rose year-on-year from 21.03% to 22.02% in July 2022. This reflected in the prices of food commodities such as bread and cereals, potatoes, yam, and other tubers, meat, fish, oil, and fat. But he said month-on-month, the food sub-index in July 2022 was 2.04% lower than the 2.05% recorded in the previous month.
“The index for all items less farm produce (Core inflation), which excludes the prices of volatile agricultural produce stood at 16.26% in July 2022 on a year-on-year basis.
“This was higher when compared to 13.72% recorded in July 2021. On a month-on-month basis, the core sub-index was 1.75% in July 2022 higher when compared to 1.56% recorded in June 2022,” he said.
Other areas where inflation was highly recorded are in prices of gas, liquid fuel, solid fuel, passenger transport by road, passenger transport by air, garments, cleaning, repair and hire of clothing.
Consequently, the new inflation rate means more suffering for Nigerians who are already overwhelmed by the weight of rising cost of living.
With N30,000 monthly minimum wage, a large number of Nigerians cannot afford basic human necessities, especially food. This means more Nigerians are going to fall into abject poverty by the end of the year.
The World Bank had warned earlier in the year that the number of poor Nigerians is expected to hit 95.1 million in 2022. The projection is unfortunately becoming a reality.