Nigeria’s headline inflation rate surged to 33.95% in May, marking a slight increase from the April 2024 rate of 33.69%.
The latest inflation report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows that the monthly comparison rise of 0.26 percentage points in the headline inflation rate between April and May 2024.
The report says, “On a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate in May 2024 stood significantly higher at 11.54 percentage points compared to May 2023, where it was recorded at 22.41%.
“This indicates a substantial increase in the average price levels over the year, reflecting ongoing economic pressures.”
However, the report adds that, contrasting the year-on-year trend, the month-on-month headline inflation rate for May 2024 was 2.14%, which showed a slight decrease from April 2024, where it stood at 2.29%.
“This means that while inflation remained high on an annual basis, the rate of increase in average price levels slowed marginally from April to May 2024,” the report says.
The NBS says that every month, 10,534 informants spread across the country provide price data for the computation of the CPI.
It says, “The market items currently comprise 740 goods and services regularly priced. The first stage in the calculation of the CPI is the collection of prices on each item (740 goods and services) from outlets in each sector (rural or urban) for each state.
“Prices are then averaged for each item per sector across the state. The next step is to use the average price to calculate the basic index for each commodity: The current year’s price of each commodity is compared with a base year’s price to obtain a relative price.”