Nigeria’s Inflation Rises to 33.88% as Food Inflation Hits 39.16%

Nigeria’s inflation continued its upward trend in October 2024 as the price of food, electricity, and fuels pushed the headline inflation to 33.88 percent relative to the September 2024 headline inflation rate of 32.70 percent.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in the report on Friday, the headline inflation rate increased by 1.18 percent points compared to the September 2024 Headline inflation rate.

Recall that Nigeria’s inflation had slowed in July and August, but resumed its upward trend in September.

On a year-on-year basis, the Headline inflation rate was 6.55 percent points higher than the rate recorded in October 2023 (27.33 percent).

This shows that the headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) increased in October 2024 when compared to the same month in the preceding year (October 2023).

Furthermore, on a month-on-month basis, the Headline inflation rate in October 2024 was 2.64 percent, which was 0.12 percent higher than the rate recorded in September 2024, which stood at 2.52 percent.

This means that in October 2024, the rate of increase in the average price level was higher than the rate of increase in the average price level in September 2024.

Also, Nigeria’s food inflation rate in October 2024 shot up to 39.16 percent on a year-on-year basis, 7.64 percent points higher compared to the rate recorded in October 2023, which came in at 31.52 percent.

The rise in food inflation on a year-on-year basis was caused by increases in prices of the following items: guinea corn, rice, maize grains, rice, yam, water yam, coco Yam, palm oil, and vegetable oil, among others.

On a month-on-month basis, the food inflation rate in October 2024 was 2.94 percent which shows a
0.30 percent increase compared to the rate recorded in September 2024 (2.64 percent).

The rise can be attributed to the rate of increase in the average prices of palm oil, vegetable oil, fish, dried beef, goat meat, mutton, and other meat classes, bread, guinea corn flour, plantain flour, and rice.