By Abdulquddus OKELE InvestAdvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), on Sunday said Nigeria’s headline consumer price index (CPI) has recorded its tenth consecutive deceleration this year. Headline inflation was 15.90 in November, 0.01 percent points lower than the rate recorded in October (15.91) percent making it the tenth consecutive disinflation (slowdown in the inflation rate though still positive) in headline year on year inflation since January 2017.
“Increases were recorded in all COICOP divisions that yield the Headline Index,” NBS said in its latest report.
According to the report, on a month-on-month basis, the Headline index increased by 0.78 percent in November 2017, 0.02 percent points higher from the rate of 0.76 percent recorded in October. This represents the first rise in month on month inflation following five consecutive months on month contraction in headline inflation since May 2017.
It said the percentage change in the average composite CPI for the twelve month period ending in November 2017 over the average of the CPI for the previous twelve month period was 16.76 percent, showing 0.21 percent point lower from 16.97 percent recorded in October 2017.
The Urban inflation rate rose by 16.27 percent (year-on-year) in November from 16.19 percent recorded in October, while the Rural inflation rate also eased by 15.59 percent in November from 15.67 percent in October.
On month-on-month basis, the urban index rose by 0.85 percent in November, up by 0.03 from 0.82 percent recorded in October, while the rural index rose by 0.724 percent in November, up by 0.009 when compared with 0.715 percent in October.
The corresponding twelve month year-on-year average percentage change for the urban index is 17.26 percent in November. This is less than 17.57 percent reported in October 2017, while the corresponding rural inflation rate in November is 16.29 percent compared to 16.41 percent recorded in October 2017.
“The CPI measures the average change over time in prices of goods and services consumed by people for day- to-day living. The construction of the CPI combines economic theory, sampling and other statistical techniques using data from other surveys to produce a weighted measure of average price changes in the Nigerian economy. The weighting occurs to capture the importance of the selected commodities in the entire index. The production of the CPI requires skills of economists, statisticians, computer scientists, data collectors and others.
Key in the construction of the price index is the selection of the market basket of goods and services. Every month, 10,534 informants spread across the country provide price data for the computation of the CPI.The market items currently comprise of 740 goods and services regularly priced,” the NBS said in its CPI and Inflation Report November 2017.