Zambia is currently facing a major economic crisis as inflation continue to soar, causing financial strain on families and businesses.
According to the latest statistics obtained by the Zambian Business Times, Annual inflation for May 2024 increased to about 15% (14.7 percent) from 13.8 percent recorded in April 2024. This means that on average, prices of goods and services increased by 14.7 percent between May 2023 and May 2024. This development was mainly attributed to price movements of both food and non- food items.
The continued rise in inflation is a major concern for families who are already struggling to make ends meet.
Zambia’s current inflation at 14.8% about 15 percent is 7% above the government 6– 8 percent target band which has been there for quite some time now but has not yielded anything.
Of the overall 14.7 percent annual inflation, the Food and Non-alcoholic beverages group contributed 9.4 percentage points, while the Non-food group accounted for 5.3 percentage points. Of the 5.3 percentage points, Transport contributed the highest at 2.0 percentage points, followed by Housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels at 1.0 percentage points, Furnishings, household equipment & routine household maintenance, and Clothing & footwear at 0.8 and 0.6 percentage points, respectively. The rest of the Non-Food group accounted for the remaining 0.9 percentage points
A disaggregation of the annual inflation by province shows that annual inflation during the month under review increased for; Central (18.4 from 17.2%); Copperbelt (14.7%from 13.9%); Eastern (14.8% from13.8%) Lusaka (13.9% from 12.0%), Northern (9.2% from 9.1%); North-western (12.5% from12.2%) and Southern Provinces (16.6% from 16.2%). Annual inflation decreased for Western Province (20.1% from 22.5%) while Luapula Province remained the same at 12.9%
Of the overall 14.7 percent annual inflation, Lusaka province contributed the highest at 4.1 percentage points followed by Copperbelt which contributed 3.1 percentage points. Central and Southern Provinces contributed 1.9 and 1.7 percentage points respectively while Northwestern province had the lowest contribution of 0.4 percentage points
Meanwhile, the overall monthly inflation for May 2024 was recorded at 1.4 percent from 1.0 percent recorded in the previous month. This outturn was mainly attributed to price movements in selected food and non-food items.
