The government’s target of lowering inflation to as low as 9% to 7% seems to be getting on track, this is as per the recently released Kenya Bureau of Statistics CPI and Inflation Rates February report.
The report indicates that inflation rates have declined by 1.62 percentage points to stand at 16.69%, a positive trend towards realizing a single digit rate within the foreseeable future.
The food and non-alcoholic index fell by 0.3 between January and February. This slight decrease has been occasioned by both rises and fall in the prices of several food products. While the prices of sugar, maize flour, wheat flour, maize grain and rice went down by 17.61%, 4.27%, 6.22%, 2.56% and 0.78% respectively. The prices of sukuma wiki, potatoes, cabbages and milk went up by 12.48%, 4.56%, 11.75% and 2.87% respectively.
Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and other fuels’ index went up marginally by 0.2% between January 2012 and February 2012. The prices of kerosene and cooking gas decreased by 3.80% and 5.65% respectively, over the same period.
The transport index also went down by 0.91% as a result of the continued fall in matatu, bas and taxi fares. Routes such 4 W which initially had a fare of 60 KES during the peak hours now have a fare of 50 KES.