Nigeria’s headline inflation rate decreased to 33.40% in July 2024, down from 34.19% in June 2024, according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
This marks the first decline in the inflation rate since December 2022, when it last dropped to 21.34%.
The July 2024 inflation rate reflects a decrease of 0.79 percentage points compared to the previous month. However, on a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 9.32 percentage points higher than the 24.08% recorded in July 2023, indicating a continued rise in inflation over the past year.
Month-on-month, the headline inflation rate in July 2024 was 2.28%, slightly lower than the 2.31% recorded in June 2024.
The increase in year-on-year inflation was largely driven by food and non-alcoholic beverages, which contributed 17.30%, followed by housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels, which accounted for 5.59%.
Core inflation, which excludes volatile agricultural products and energy prices, rose to 27.47% year-on-year in July 2024, up by 6.99 percentage points from 20.47% in July 2023. On a month-on-month basis, core inflation stood at 2.16% in July 2024, a slight increase from 2.06% in June 2024. The twelve-month average core inflation rate was 24.65% for the period ending in July 2024, compared to 18.84% in the previous year.
Food inflation was particularly pronounced, with the rate reaching 39.53% year-on-year in July 2024, a significant increase of 12.55 percentage points from 26.98% in July 2023. The rise in food prices was driven by higher costs for items such as semovita, yam flour, and wheat flour.
However, on a month-on-month basis, food inflation eased slightly to 2.47% in July 2024, down from 2.55% in June 2024. This decline is attributed to slower price increases for products like tin milk, baby powdered milk, fresh fish, snail, date palm fruit, watermelon, garri, and akpu.
Urban inflation in July 2024 was 35.77% on a year-on-year basis, 9.94 percentage points higher than in July 2023. Month-on-month, urban inflation was relatively stable at 2.46%, with a negligible decrease from June 2024. The twelve-month average urban inflation rate stood at 32.89% in July 2024, compared to 22.87% in July 2023.
Rural inflation also showed a significant year-on-year increase, reaching 31.26% in July 2024, 8.77 percentage points higher than in July 2023. On a month-on-month basis, rural inflation decreased slightly to 2.10% in July 2024 from 2.17% in June 2024. The twelve-month average rural inflation rate was 28.86% in July 2024, up from 21.04% in the same month the previous year.
