Uganda Food prices drive inflation to 11%

Friday, 1st April, 2011

KAMPALA-Rising food prices helped drive Uganda’s year-on-year inflation rate up for the fifth month in a row in March to 11.1% from a revised 6.4% in February, official data showed on Thursday.

The Uganda Bureau of Statistics said in a statement the consumer price index climbed 4.1% in March after a 1.7% rise in February.

The February increase had initially been given as 1.3% with headline inflation at 6.0%.

Food prices, which have a 27.2% weighting in the consumer price basket, leapt 11.9% from a month earlier. The year-on-year inflation rate for food crops surged to 29.1% in March from 6.9% in February.

“The increase in prices of these food items is attributed to reduced supplies to the market due to a prolonged dry season in most parts of the country,” the statistics office said.

“Prices for petrol, diesel and paraffin went up due to the rising price of oil on the international market,” it said. The jump in inflation rate mirrors the trend seen in neighbouring Kenya, where the rate also rose for a fifth straight month hitting 9.19% in March.