In April 2024, the headline inflation rate rose to 33.69 percent, up from 33.20 percent in March 2024, marking an increase of 0.49 percent points according to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Comparing year-on-year data, the inflation rate in April 2024 was 11.47 percent points higher than in April 2023, where it stood at 22.22 percent. This indicates that the headline inflation rate has risen significantly over the past year.
Additionally, on a month-to-month basis, the inflation rate for April 2024 was 2.29 percent, which is 0.73 percent lower than the 3.02 percent recorded in March 2024. This suggests that the rate at which prices increased in April 2024 was slower than the rate in March 2024.
In April 2024, the food inflation rate reached 40.53 percent on a year-on-year basis, marking a substantial increase of 15.92 percentage points from the 24.61 percent recorded in April 2023. This significant rise in food inflation can be attributed to higher prices for several items including millet flour, garri, bread, prepacked wheat flour, and semovita, all of which belong to the Bread and Cereals class, as well as for yam tuber, water yam, and cocoyam and others.
For the year ending in April 2024, the average annual rate of food inflation stood at 32.74 percent, representing an increase of 9.52 percentage points over the 23.22 percent average annual rate recorded in April 2023.
Core inflation, which excludes the prices of volatile agricultural products and energy, reached 26.84 percent in April 2024 on a year-on-year basis, an increase of 6.87 percent from the 19.96 percent recorded in April 2023. The most significant price rises were observed in actual and imputed rentals for housing, motorcycle journeys, bus journeys within a city (under Passenger Transport by Road Class), consultation fees for medical doctors, X-ray photography (under Medical Services Class), and accommodation services.
On a month-on-month basis, the core inflation rate was 2.20 percent in April 2024, down from 2.54 percent in March 2024, representing a decrease of 0.34 percent. The average annual core inflation rate for the twelve months ending in April 2024 was 22.84 percent, which is 5.15 percentage points higher than the 17.70 percent recorded in April 2023.
In April 2024, the urban inflation rate on a year-on-year basis reached 36.00 percent, which is 12.61 percentage points higher than the 23.39 percent recorded in April 2023. On a month-on-month basis, the urban inflation rate for April 2024 was 2.67 percent, showing a decrease of 0.50 percentage points from the 3.17 percent seen in March 2024. The average urban inflation rate over the twelve months ending in April 2024 was 30.02 percent, marking an increase of 8.53 percentage points from the 21.50 percent reported in April 2023.
In April 2024, the rural inflation rate was 31.64 percent on a year-on-year basis, which is 10.50 percentage points higher than the 21.14 percent seen in April 2023.
On a month-on-month basis, the rural inflation rate for April 2024 was 1.92 percent, a decrease of 0.95 percentage points from the 2.87 percent recorded in March 2024. The average rural inflation rate over the twelve months ending in April 2024 was 26.38 percent, which represents an increase of 6.20 percentage points from the 20.18 percent reported in April 2023.