Nigeria’s consumer price index (CPI), otherwise referred to as inflation rate for goods and services, rose to the highest level since May, at 11.28 percent in September 2018, the National Bureau of Statistic (NBS) has said.
The statistics agency, in its latest CPI report published yesterday in Abuja, said the new rate, albeit a marginal increase by 0.05 percent, rose from 11.23 percent recorded in August, about 0.84 percent rise on a monthly basis.
The CPI measures the average change in prices of goods and services consumed by people for day-to-day living over time.
The change is about 0.05 percent points higher than the rate recorded in August 2018.
Amid general increases in prices of goods and services, the latest rise is the second in two successive months after 18 consecutive months of decline, from about 17.78 percent in February 2017 to 11.14 percent in July 2018.
Despite the rising rate, the NBS said core inflation, which actually mirrors the actual inflation for the country’s economy, dropped marginally to about 9.8 percent, from 10 percent.
Analysts say the new inflation figure is still in line with the federal government’s target of a single digit rate in the foreseeable future.
A research analyst at SY&T Communications Limited, Lukman Otunuga, said most investors in the Nigerian stock market were concerned the latest rise in inflation was not the onset of another round of inflationary pressures in Nigeria during the final trading quarter of the year.
Otunuga said concerns may heighten over inflation edging away from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s target of six to nine percent.
He said market expectations were for a cut, any moment, in the monetary policy rate (MPR), otherwise called lending rate, by the monetary policy committee (MPC) of the CBN.
“The combination of rising inflation, uncertainty ahead of the 2019 elections, global trade tensions and U.S.
rate hike expectations are all likely factors to force the CBN to retain status quo (in the MPR) this quarter,” Otunuga noted
