According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria’s Consumer Price Index increased to 15.92% in March.
This is the highest inflation rate the country has seen since November 2021, when it fell to 15.99 percent.
Nigeria is not immune to the global price surge, as seen by the increase in the inflation rate in March.
The labor department of the United States announced on Tuesday that the country’s inflation rate climbed to 8.5 percent in March, the highest level since 1981.
The spike in worldwide inflation rates has been linked to the rise in energy prices brought on by the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
Nigerian inflation declined by 2.25 percent in March 2022, according to the NBS’s “CPI report for March 2022,” compared to 18.7 percent in March 2021.
However, the rate of inflation in March was 0.22 percent higher than the rate of 15.70 percent in February.
“The consumer price index, which measures inflation, surged to 15.92 percent on a year-over-year basis in March 2022,” according to the report.
“This is 2.25 percentage points lower than the rate of 18.17 percent in March 2021.” This signifies that, when compared to the same month the previous year, the headline inflation rate slowed in March 2022.
“All COICOP divisions that contributed to the headline index saw increases.” On a month-to-month basis, the headline index grew to 1.74 percent in March 2022, up 0.11 percent from the rate of 1.63 percent in February 2022.”
The percentage change in the average composite CPI for the twelve months ending March 2022 over the previous twelve months period, according to the NBS, is 16.54 percent, down 0.19 percent from the 16.73 percent recorded in February.
According to the study, the urban inflation rate grew to 16.44 percent year on year in March, a decrease of 2.32 percent from the rate reported in March 2021.
Similarly, rural inflation fell 2.18 percentage points to 15.42 percent in March 2022, compared to 17.60 percent in March 2021.
In terms of food inflation, according to the NBS report, the composite food index increased to 17.20% in March from 17.11% in February.
Food price rises, such as bread, cereal, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fish, and meat, were blamed for the increase in inflation rate.
