NIGERIA’s headline inflation rose to 34.80 per cent in December 2024, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has reported.
The NBS gave the latest figure in its Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released on Wednesday, January 15.
The statistics office uses the CPI to measure the rate of change in prices of goods and services within a month.
The data shows that Nigeria’s headline inflation rose marginally by 0.20 per cent from 36.60 per cent in November 2024.
According to the NBS, increases in demand for goods and services during the festive season were primarily driven by the rise in the December inflation figure.
The data showed that the 34.80 per cent inflation in December 2024 was 5.87 per cent higher than the 28.92 per cent rate recorded in December 2023.
This year-on-year increase indicates a significant rise in the cost of living compared to the same month in the previous year.
On a month-on-month basis, headline inflation slightly slowed to 2.44 per cent in December 2024 compared to 2.64 per cent in November 2024, representing a slight deceleration in prices.
A further check on the NBS report indicated that the food inflation rate rose to 39.84 per cent in December 2024 compared to 33.93 per cent in December 2023.
According to the statistics office, the rise in food inflation on a year-on-year basis was caused by increases in prices of yam, water yam, sweet potatoes, beer, pinto, guinea corn, maize grains, rice, and dried fish-sardine, catfish dried, and other classes of the food items.
“On a month-on-month basis, the food inflation rate in December 2024 was 2.66 per cent compared to 2.98 per cent recorded in November 2024.
“The decline can be attributed to the rate of decrease in the average prices of local beer (burukutu), pinto (tobacco class), fruit juice in tin, malt drinks, etc (soft drinks class), rice, millet, maize flour, etc (bread and cereals class) and water yam, Irish potatoes, coco yam, etc (potatoes, yam & other tubers class),” NBS added.