RISE IN FOOD PRICES PUSHES INFLATION UP

A woman cooks food. Maize flour prices rose last month, driving inflation up. PHOTO | FILE 

Dar es Salaam. The year-on-year inflation rose to 5.5 per cent in February from 5.2 per cent in January, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said yesterday, attributing the change largely to increasing food prices.

With a weighting of 38.5 per cent, food and non-alcoholic beverages are the biggest driver of inflation in the country.

“That means the speed of price increase for commodities in the year ending February 2017, has increased as compared with the speed of price increase recorded for the same period in the previous month,” said the NBS acting labour and price statistics manager, Ms Ruth Minja.

The increase in the headline inflation was attributed to price increase of mainly food items, according to her. Some of the food items that contributed to an increase in inflation include maize grain, rice, maize flour, sorghum, green bananas and beans.

The price of maize flour rose by 10.1 per cent while that maize grains jumped by 12.2 per cent.

A kilo of maize flour is sold at an average of Sh2,000 in Dar es Salaam.

The price rice rose by four per cent while that of sorghum, green bananas and beans increased by 5.6 per cent, 9.5 and 6.7 per cent respectively. According to Ms Minja, in combination, food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation rate increased to 8.7 per cent from 7.6 per cent.

Ms Minja purchasing power of the consumer’s shilling that measures the change in the value of consumer goods and services that a Tanzanian shilling could buy at different period, reached Sh93 and 48 cents in February 2017 compared with Sh94 and 42 cents the previous month.

News of inflation increase has come barely one week after the Bank of Tanzania lowered its discount rate to 12 per cent from 16 per cent in a deliberate attempt to help spur lending and boost economic growth after months of retarded growth of commercial banks’ credit to the productive sector.