Rate of inflation marginally rises to 6.68pc

By Judith Akolo

The rate of inflation has marginally increased to 6.68 percent driven up by higher cost of some food items, house rent and kerosene.

Year-on-year inflation rose 21 basis points with the food and non-alcoholic beverages index recording the highest increase at 1.17 percent, followed by clothing and footwear at 0.7 percent and transport that was up 0.55 percent.

Latest figures from the Kenya Bureau of Statistics show that this month food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation rose 1.17 percent.

During the month, the cost of fruits such as mangoes, pineapples and ripe bananas decreased. However the decreases were not big enough to off-set increases in the cost of tomatoes, sukuma wiki, sugar, beef and cabbages.

This pushed up the year-on-year food inflation to 11.13 percent. Another notable change this month is housing with rent for a single room rising 0.9 percent to 4,070 shillings while rent for a three-bedroom maisonette rose 0.4 percent to 33,247 shillings per month.

This in addition to the 5.8 percent increase in the pump price of kerosene that outweighed decreases in the cost of charcoal and cooking gas, pushed up the Housing, Water, Electricity and other fuels index by 11 basis points.

The transport index too rose by 0.55 percent this month on account of an increase in the pump prices of petrol and diesel.

The cost of electricity remained at the same level as last month but when compared to a year ago, the cost of 50 kilowatts hour reduced by 3.2 percent while 200 kilowatts hour is 2.1 percent cheaper.

The prices were obtained from selected retail outlets in 25 data collection zones located in Nairobi and 13 other urban centers