Mozambique: Consumer Price Index to include all provinces

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Mozambique: Consumer Price Index to include all provinces

7:46 CAT | 24 Oct 2022

Photo: Notícias

The Mozambican government is working to include data from all 11 country’s provinces to calculate the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is used to measure the inflation rate.

Currently, monthly inflation in Mozambique is measured by the CPI in the three largest cities namely Maputo, Beira and Nampula, representing the southern and northern regions of Mozambique, respectively.

The Prime Minister, Adriano Maleiane, explained on Thursday (20) that the government is working to design a CPI which closely reflects the average of all 11 provinces of Mozambique.

“We are working to establish the CPI for each province and then find out the average of the 11 provinces which will be the average of domestic inflation,” said Maleiane at the session of the Assembly of the Republic, the Mozambican parliament, where the government responds to the deputies’ requests for information.

Maleiane explained the government’s decision saying that it will allow each individual province to discuss, when designing its plans, its own requirements to lower the cost of living and thus “compete in terms of development”.

The full CPI, according to Maleiane, will also help to review the national strategy for economic development “and allow all of us decide where we want to be in for instance in 2041”.

He reiterated the government’s commitment to seek solutions to keep inflation in check in order to avoid a rise in the cost of living.

The Prime Minister also said that the average inflation rate in the country now stands at 8.79 percent thanks to the measures taken by the government to contain the cost of living.

He said that the average inflation rate in the world was 8.8 percent, but in the sub-Saharan zone it was 14 percent, and in the SADC [Southern African Development Community] it was 30 percent, mainly influenced by Zimbabwe, which has an inflation rate of up to 200 percent.

“I am calling on Mozambicans to recognise the government’s efforts in a context in which we have been living since 2020, extremely difficult times and, for the particular case of Mozambique, having to deal with natural disasters,” he said.

According to the Prime Minister, in this context the government has been taking short-term combined measures focused on the structure of fuel prices and the protection of the most vulnerable citizens.

“The key objective of these measures is to mitigate the impact of rising fuel prices on the international market on the lives of Mozambicans and country’s economy.

“But even in this context of inflation of 8.79 per cent is comparatively better and had we not taken monetary and fiscal policy measures we probably would have reached the same average of sub-Saharan Africa or SADC,” said the Prime Minister.

Source: AIM