Inflation hits 13%

May 01, 2005

HIGH prices for staple foods, electricity and fuel have pushed the annual headline inflation rate to 12.6% for the year ending April 2005 from 10.6% in March 2005.

By Doreen Kansiime

HIGH prices for staple foods, electricity and fuel have pushed the annual headline inflation rate to 12.6% for the year ending April 2005 from 10.6% in March 2005.

“This is the highest headline inflation in over 10 years since June 1994 when it was 16.1%,” Matthew Ssewanyana, the director of macro-economic statistics at Uganda Bureau of Statistics said while releasing the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for April at the finance ministry on Friday.

Ssewanyana said prices of staple foods especially matooke, irish and sweet potatoes, cereals, fruits and vegetables rose by 6.8%.
He said earlier on, the prolonged drought had led to the supply shortage, which pushed the prices up.

However, Ssewanyana said the recent heavy rains had made the roads impassable, which increased transport costs and led to a continued rise in prices.
“As long as fuel prices go up making transport prices high, we do not expect prices to go down soon even if production goes up slightly,” he said.

Ssewanyana said petrol and paraffin prices went up by about 10% due to an increase in world prices.

He said the recent price increases registered early last week had not been included in April’s CPI.
Ssewanyana said before fuel prices went up, there were decreases in prices of some goods like matooke.

The monthly headline inflation rate for April went up by 3.4% compared with 1.4% last month, the biggest increase since April 1997.

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