From Basil Obasi, Abuja
The sum up of Consumer Price Index (CPI) reports from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in 2016, indicates that the rate of inflation in Nigeria increased significantly by 92 per cent from 9.62 per cent in January, to 18.5 per cent by November this year.
From 9.62 per cent in January, the CPI climbed to 11.38 per cent February, 12.77 per cent in March and 13.77 per cent in April. Furthermore, it jumped to 15.58 per cent in May, 16.48 per cent in June, 17.13 per cent in July and 17.61 per cent in August.
The CPI edged higher to 17.85 in September, 18.33 per cent in October and 18.48 per cent in November. On the average, from January to November this year, inflation rose by 92 per cent, which implies that inflationary pressure was strong in 2016 as prices of goods and service rose astronomically during the year.
Nigeria could be said to have suffered double tragedy this year as foreign exchange rose by 143 per cent from N197 per US dollar to N490 per US dollar at the parallel market today.
The exchange rate especially between the naira and dollar is a business livewire for the country given the level of Nigerian economy’s dependency on foreign goods and service for its operation.
At the beginning of the year, NBS projected that Nigeria would record double-digit inflation rate of about 10.16 percent in 2016, up from 9.55 percent recorded in 2015 adding that over the 2017 to 2019 period, headline inflation is expected to average 9.01 per cent.
According to the Nigeria data house, the speculative pressure on the naira is likely to exist in 2016 in light of the current state of foreign reserves and inflation may rise well above 10 per cent before the end of the year.