ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria’s customer inflation hit a 17-year high in August 2022, its statistics firm said Thursday, signaling more hardship for citizens and businesses in Africa’s largest economy.
Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in its most recent Consumer Price Index that inflation rose to 20. 5 in August, up from 19. 6 in July this year and 17 in August last year.
This is the seventh consecutive monthly inflation accumulated in Nigeria this year and the highest since 2005.
The increase in inflation was due to “a disruption in the food source, an increase in the price of imports due to the persistent depreciation of the currency and a general increase in the price of production,” the statistics firm said.
The food inflation rate in August 2022 was 23. 1 percent, the statistics firm said, and blamed emerging costs of some of Nigeria’s most common foods, such as bread, cereals and tubers.
High customer inflation over the past 17 years, more than double the Central Bank of Nigeria’s 9% target, is raising more concerns among citizens and businesses in Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people.
Despite being Africa’s largest economy and one of the continent’s top oil producers, corruption, lack of trust and lack of smart government have caused economic hardship for many other people in this West African country.
Analysts also see the “external shocks” of the war in Ukraine as contributing to Nigeria’s emerging inflation. With the increase in the value of oil and fuel, for example, “the number of our imports and the payment of subsidies have increased, which has had an impact on the retail value of gasoline, which is imperative for companies in the Nigerian market,” said Ese Osawmonyi of research firm SBM. Intelligence based in Lagos.
Safety considerations that led to the deaths of thousands of others last year in northern Nigeria have also raised food inflation by restricting materials to some of Nigeria’s largest food-producing states, analyst Osawmonyi said.
This adds to fears that the floods, which have displaced many homes and destroyed crops on large tracts of farmland in northern Nigeria, could have an additional impact on food prices.
The flour market is one of the hardest hit by emerging inflation in Nigeria. Some bakeries are now closed due to falling profits, according to Emmanuel Onuorah, who runs a bakery in the national capital, Abuja.
“People are closing,” Onuorah said of the hardships faced by bakers and other businesses.