NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 30 – Kenya’s inflation in the month of December slowed to 9.1 percent, new data shows, offering reprieve to thousands of households who have been battling high cost of food, transport, and housing.
Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) shows that inflation dropped from 9.5 percent last month to 9.1 percent in December.
“The overall year on year inflation rate as measured by consumer price index (CPI) was 9.1 percent in December 2022,” KNBS report shows.
The rise in inflation was largely due to an increase in prices of commodities under food and non-alcoholic beverages (13.8 per cent); transport (13 per cent), and housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (6.2 per cent) between December 2021 and December 2022.
During the period, prices of tomatoes, fortified maize flour, maize grain-loose, and beef-with-bones increased by 8.9, 3.9, 1 and 0.9 percent respectively.
However, prices of spinach, cabbages, cooking oil (salad) and mangoes dropped by 5.6, 3.9, 3.9 and 3.8 percent respectively.
“The housing, water, electricity, gas and other Fuels’ Index increased by 0.7 percent between November 2022 and December 2022,” KNBS adds.
The transport index increased by 2.3 percent between November 2022 mainly due to increase in prices of country bus fares.
Notable, though the prices of diesel and petrol remained the same in December 2022, they were high relative to December 2021.
