The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has reported that Nigeria’s inflation rate surged to 33.95% in May, driven by rising prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages. This marks an increase from April’s rate of 33.69%.
According to the NBS’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released on Saturday, the headline inflation rate rose by 0.26 percentage points in May compared to April. On a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate is up by 11.54 percentage points from the 22.41% recorded in May 2023.
The report highlights a month-on-month decrease in the rate of increase in the average price level, with May’s rate at 2.14%, down from 2.29% in April.
Key drivers of the headline inflation include food and non-alcoholic beverages at 17.59%, followed by housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels at 5.68%. Clothing and footwear contributed 2.60%, transport 2.21%, and furnishings, household equipment, and maintenance at 1.71%.
Urban inflation rose to 36.34% in May, 12.61 percentage points higher than the 23.74% recorded in May 2023. Month-on-month, the urban inflation rate was 2.35% in May, down from 2.67% in April. Rural inflation stood at 31.82% year-on-year, 10.63 percentage points higher than the 21.19% recorded in May 2023.
Food inflation surged to 40.66% in May, up from 24.82% in the same month last year, an increase of 15.84 percentage points. Key contributors to the rise in food inflation include semovita, oat flake, yam flour, garri, beans, Irish potatoes, yam, water yam, palm oil, vegetable oil, stockfish, mudfish, crayfish, beef head, chicken, pork head, and bush meat.
The month-on-month food inflation rate in May was 2.28%, a decrease from the 2.50% recorded in April.
