Kenya’s year on year inflation eases to 6.06pc in March - Capital Business
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Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels reduced marginally by -0.02 driven despite a slight increase in the cost of house rents./COURTESY

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Kenya’s year on year inflation eases to 6.06pc in March

NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 1-Kenya’s year on inflation in March fell to 6.06 percent, after revising its basket of goods to include mobile phone airtime and cost of garbage collection. The rates are in comparison to February’s 6.37 percent registered.

According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the price of food items such as tomatoes and spinach dropped by 6.60 percent and 4.87 percent respectively.

During the period under review, food and non-alcoholic beverages were the highest movers at 0.55.

In the food basket, the latest data by KNBS show that the price of maize floor per kilogram was at 53.36, down from 54.15 recorded in February.

Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels reduced marginally by -0.02 driven despite a slight increase in the cost of house rents.

The prices of mangoes and onions, however, increased to retail at Sh98 and Sh110 per kilogram respectively, up from Sh93 and Sh108 posted last month.

The alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics index also increased by 0.14 percent, while its year on year rate stood at 7.63 percent.

During the review period, the transport index decreased by 0.10 percent, mainly due to a decrease in the prices of petrol at 1.28 percent.

The March 2020 inflation numbers reflect the newly rebased Consumer Price Index (CPI) which was introduced by The Central Bank of Kenya.

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“The CPI increased by 0.18 percent from 106.33 percent in February to 106.53 in March,” KNBS said in a statement.

The rebased CPI was put in place to enhance the quality of statistics, including the measurement of inflation, upon which policy makers base their decisions.

The CPI new basket consists of 330 items, compared to the previous basket of 234 items.

 

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