Uganda’s Annual headline Inflation for October 2022 increased to 10.7%, from 10.0% of September 2022, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) has said in its Consumer Price Index for October 2022.
Headline inflation is inflation-related to all the economy’s commodities, goods, and services.
On the other hand, UBOS says the Annual core inflation rose to 8.9% in October, up from 8.1% in September.
Core inflation is inflation-related to all the commodities, goods, and services in the economy minus the volatile food prices and fuel prices.
According to UBOS, maize flour inflation rose to 91.5% in October, up from 60.2% in September.
Rice inflation rose to 43.3% in October, from 32.2% in September.
Meanwhile, Matooke (bunch) rose to 75.4% in October from 59.8% in September.
UBOS says petrol inflation lowered to 45.6% in October 2022 from 55.3% in September. Diesel Inflation lowered to 52.1% in October 2022, from 63.0% in September 2022.
The Bank of Uganda (BoU) has in recent months increased the Central Bank Rate (CBR), a benchmark lending rate for commercial banks, in an attempt to control inflation.
The BoU increased the CBR to 10% in October 2022 from 9% in September.
This is the highest since August 2019.
The high inflation has been largely attributed to the highly-price imports especially petroleum products, cooking oil and other foodstuffs, which later combined with low harvest in the country to push up the prices of locally produced commodities.
BoU’s target is to maintain the inflation rate around 5%, but this is not likely, until 2024, according to predictions. Over the last eight months of hiking the CBR, commercial banks have raised their lending rates by between 2 and 2.5 per cent as a result, but this has not resulted in a fall in inflation.
