The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has unveiled the rebased Consumer Price Index (CPI), showing a decline in Nigeria’s headline inflation rate to 24.48% year-on-year.
Announcing the rebased CPI results at a press briefing in Abuja on Tuesday, the Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of the NBS, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, highlighted the significance of the updated index in accurately reflecting current economic trends.
The event marks the climax of a comprehensive and rigorous effort by the NBS to adequately measure the current level of price changes experienced by consumers of goods and services within the economy.
NBS said it is important that CPI is rebased from time to time because consumption patterns change, hence the need to update items in the CPI Basket.
Announcing the CPI rebased results, Adeniran said : “The All-Items Index, which is used to measure headline inflation for January 2025, was 110.7, resulting in a headline inflation rate of 24.48% on a year-on-year basis.
“This increase was mainly driven by food and non-alcoholic beverages, restaurants and accommodation services, and transport.
“The food index for January 2025 was 110.03, resulting in a food inflation rate of 26.08% year-on-year.
“The core index, which is all-items less farm produce and energy for January 2025, was 110.7, which gave rise to a core inflation rate of 22.59% year-on-year.
“Disaggregating by sector, the urban inflation rate was 26.09%, while the rural inflation rate was 22.15%,” he said.
The NBS boss, while announcing the inclusion of some Special Indices such as Farm Produce Index, Energy Index, Services Index, Goods Index, and Imported Food Index, noted that the inflation rates produced by the new Special Indices for 2025 were not year-on-year rates as the headline rates.
He noted that because the indices are new, the year-on-year rates would commence in January 2026, while the month-on-month rates would commence in February 2025.
“The rates being reported here are January compared to the base year, which is an average of prices in 2024.
“For the special Indices – January compared to the base year: index inflation rate—farm produce 10.50%, energy 8.9%, services 10.41%, goods 10.79%, and imported food 11.47%,” he said.
Adeniran noted that in conducting the exercise, which should typically be conducted every five years but had not been done for over ten years, the Bureau was working on ensuring that the process was rigorous, comprehensive, and inclusive, with adequate sensitisation and engagement of stakeholders at every level possible.
He explained that the rebasing process also allows statistical offices to introduce methodological enhancements to their computation procedures and align with global best practices.
Under this process, he said, the NBS is not only bringing the base year closer to the current period, from 2009 to 2024 but has also introduced some critical methodology changes to improve the computation processes and quality of the estimates.
“Under the CPI, important enhancements have been made to the methodology.
“Some of the improvements include the transition to the latest version of the classification method, the Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) 2018 version, from the 1999 version of COICOP.
“The new version has 13 divisions, bringing in household expenditure on insurance and financial services, which now weighs 0.5% relative to the total household expenditure.
“Another important improvement is the exclusion of own-production, imputed rents, and gifted items from the aggregates used to come up with the weights.
“This is because CPI is a monetary phenomenon. Hence, the computations should only include monetary expenditure.
“Also implemented under this rebasing is the movement of expenditures on meals away from home to the appropriate divisional class.
“These changes are quite significant and appropriately align expenditures to their respective classes, enabling price changes to be measured properly,” he said.
He acknowledged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), BudgiT, and the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) for the support during the process.
He disclosed that a minimum of nine different stakeholder engagements were organised and held at different times in Abuja and Lagos to harvest very useful inputs, contributions, and suggestions.
He appreciated the support of the government through the parent ministry, ably led by the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, for whom he said his support and leadership were extremely critical to the success and completion of the process.
(VON/vitalnewsngr.com)
