Food, fuel costs push inflation to new high

Kenya’s inflation rose to an 11-month high in March on the back of increased cost of transportation, fuel and basic foodstuffs, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) said Wednesday.

Inflation — a measure of changes in the cost of living year-on-year — increased 5.90 per cent from 5.78 per cent a month earlier, signalling a painful cost pinch on homes and businesses already battling debilitating Covid-19 pandemic knocks on earnings.

This the highest growth since 6.01 per cent in April 2020.

Households and businesses paid at least five per cent more for fuel in March compared with February as a result of the rising cost of importing oil products with the government coming under heavy criticism for continued heavy taxation on petrol, diesel and kerosene. The pain was felt in the cost of transportation, which edged up 1.49 per cent month-on-month.

The KNBS data shows homes consuming 200 kilowatt-hour (kWh), or units, of electricity paid Sh242.86, or 5.19 per cent, more last month to Sh4,920.94 compared with February. This was after the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority raised compensation to expensive diesel plants by Sh3.54 per unit from February’s Sh2.61.

Food and non-alcoholic indexincreased 0.35 per cent.

The cost of filling a 13-kilo liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) — cooking gas— also went up by Sh43.03, or 2.12 percent, to an average of Sh2,074.23 in March.

Food and non-alcoholic index, on the other hand, increased 0.35 percent.

“This food inflation was mainly attributed to increase in prices of some food items, which outweighed the decrease in prices of other foodstuffs,” KNBS managing director Macdonald Obudho said in a statement.

“On the other hand, prices of onions (leeks and bulbs), maize grain-loose and fortified maize flour decreased by 2.98, 1.96 and 1.94 per cent, respectively.”