Annual rate of inflation rises to 6.8 pc

Sat, 01 Jul 2017 12:07:51 +0000

By ROGERS KALERO

THE year-on-year inflation rate for June has increased to 6.8 percent compared to 6.5 percent recorded in May, Central Statistic Officer (CSO) director John Kalumbi has said.

Mr Kalumbi said the increase reflected that on average prices of commodities had increased by 6.8 percent between June 2016 and June 2017.

The CSO chief said at a monthly briefing at the Zambia Trade Fair grounds in Ndola yesterday that the annual food inflation rate for June was recorded at 5.8 percent as compared to 5.9 percent recorded in May while the non-food inflation rate for the said period had increased from 7.3 percent to 8.0 percent.

“The decrease was mainly attributed to price changes in some food products while the increase was mainly attributed to the upward adjustment of electricity tariffs.

“Of the 6.8 percent, food and alcoholic beverages accounted for 3.1 percent points while non-food items accounted for 3.7 percentage points,” Mr Kalumbi said. He said provincial changes in inflation rate showed that between June 2016 and June 2017, Copperbelt had the highest annual rate of inflation at 8.1 followed by North Western Province at 7.8 percent while Western Province recorded the lowest rate at 5.1 percent. “Lusaka had the highest provincial contribution of 2 percentage points to overall 6.8 annual inflation rate for June.

“This implied that the price movements in Lusaka had the greatest influence on the overall annual rate of inflation. Southern Province had the second highest at 1.2 points while Western Province had the lowest contribution at 0.1 percentage points,” He said. Mr Kalumbi said that between May and June the national average price of a 25 kg bag of breakfast mealie meal decreased by 2.4 percent from K 98.76 to K 96.37 while the average price of roller meal decreased by 7.2 percent from K80.56 to K74.73. He added that the country recorded a trade deficit of K333.1 million in May from K1,166.6 million recorded in April, which represented a 71.4 percent decrease.

He explained that this meant that the country imported more in May than it exported in nominal terms.

Mr Kalumbi said there had been a decrease of 4.5 percent in total value of metal exports from K4,681.0 million in April to K4,468.5 in May, adding that the overall contribution of metals and their products to the total export earnings in both months averaged 78.7 percent. He added that non-traditional exports (NTEs) had recorded an increase of 17.3 percent from K1,140.1 million in April to K1,337.4 million in May with the share of NTEs recording an average of 21.3 percent in revenue earnings between May and April.