Dr Muda Yusuf, the director of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, has expressed concerns over Nigeria’s resurgence of inflationary pressures, particularly after months of relative respite.
Commenting on the inflation figure on Tuesday, he said, “It is troubling that we are witnessing a resurgence of high inflationary pressures after some few months of respite despite policy measures to tame inflation, especially on the monetary side. Purchasing power had continued to plunge over the past few months. The situation had been further exacerbated by the surging petrol price.”
Nigeria’s headline inflation rose to 32.70 per cent in September which demonstrated a reverse of the slowing inflation rate in the previous two months of July and August.
The latest Consumer Price Index report from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that inflation figure is a marginal increase of 0.55 per cent from the August 2024 figure of 32.15 per cent, reflecting ongoing price pressures across the country.
Dr. Yusuf attributed the increase in inflation to factors such as the rising cost of petrol, depreciation of the naira, and surging transportation and logistics costs.
He noted, “the reality is that the dynamics driving inflation are yet to be effectively subdued. These factors include the depreciating exchange rate, surging fuel price, rising transportation costs, logistics and supply chain challenges, high energy cost, climate change including resultant incidents of flooding, insecurity in farming communities and structural bottlenecks to production.
“These are largely supply-side issues. There is also the factor of seasonality of agricultural outputs which activates seasonal price surge in some food crops. Elevated inflationary pressures escalate production costs, weakens profitability, and dampens investors’ confidence.”
Yusuf urged the government to provide concessionary import duties for industrialists and prioritise the resolution of critical issues like power supply, logistics, and foreign exchange.
Also, he highlighted the importance of sub-national governments in addressing food inflation by improving rural infrastructure to ease transportation and access to markets.
