Mozambique: How inflation topped 10 percent for the first time in five years

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Mozambique: How inflation topped 10 percent for the first time in five years

6:40 CAT | 14 Jan 2016

In file Club of Mozambique.

Inflation for the year January to December 2015 stood at 10.55 percent, the highest overall rise in prices recorded by Mozambique’s National Statistics Institute (INE) in the last five years.

Inflation for the month of December was 4.76 percent against 1.93 in the same month in 2014, a figure that represents an acceleration of prices of around 8.62 percentage points (pp). This is also recorded as the highest monthly inflation figure since 2010.

The food and soft drinks sector contributed most to the increase of prices in this period, with a hike of 7.87 pp, according to Perpetua Michangula, head of INE’s statistics department.

Michangula said that other sectors which contributed most to the rise in prices were clothing and footwear, furniture and furnishings, transport, leisure and recreation and education.

“Tomatoes made the biggest contribution over the year, with 1.26 percent and a variation of 24.3 percentage points. Next comes rice, contributing 0.92 percentage points with a variation of 17.8 percent.”

The Consumer Prices Index (IPC) is based on data collected in the three main Mozambican cities – Maputo (the capital, south), Beira (Sofala, centre) and Nampula (north).

Data puts December 2015 inflation at 2.93 percentage points, with November’s 1.83 percent.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages sector posted the greatest increase, at around 8.59 percent for December, a trend in motion since last August.

“But note that some sectors have weak price escalation. Transport’s contribution to headline inflation was only 0.2 percentage points, while clothing and footwear’s was only 0.14 percentage points,” Michangula noted.

The furniture, home decoration and kitchen equipment sector contributed 0.11 pp to overall inflation. There are other sectors that contributed to inflation, but these are the ones that have had a greater influence.

Of the individual products that contributed to inflation in December, tomatoes feature first with an increase of 28.1 percent, a 0.85 pp contribution to the inflation total. Rice went up 12.9 percent, contributing 0.63 percentage points.

Corn flour and cooking oil rose by 8.3 and 11.5 percent respectively. Their contribution to the total inflation was 0.32 and 0.24 percentage points. Onions varied as much as oil and contributed 0.18 percentage points.

Mackerel and fresh and frozen fish had variations of 6.9 and 4.2 percent respectively, both contributing 0.14 percentage points to total inflation.

All the above products contributed for 2.4 percent of the total inflation of December 2015.

Source: AIM