By Foday Moriba Conteh
During a press briefing held at its headquarters on Tower Hill in Freetown, on the 24th May, 2021 , Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats-SL),the institution that is charged with the responsibility of compiling statistical data in the country released the Consumer Price Index for April 2021.
According to the Report, the National Inflation Rate for April, 2021 (year-on-year) stood at 9.60 percentage point from 8.95 percent in March 2021. The monthly national consumer price inflation for April 2021 is 2.73 percent; up by 1.89 percentage point from 0.84 percent in March 2021.
The Statistician General, Professor Osman Sankoh, noted that the CPI is a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by largely urban consumers for a market basket of consumer’s goods and services, adding that they are using the modified lapeyres formula to compute indices according to the Classification of Individuals Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) with 12 functions consistent with the ECOWAS, IMF and World Bank.
Professor Osman Sankoh further added that the CIP Methodology- basket prices are collected for 446 items identified in 2008 (base-year/reference year), adding that the basket can only be more appropriately changed after a living standard survey (Sierra Leone Integrated Household Survey-SLIHS).
Giving highlights on the CPI for April, he said the April 2021 CPI shows that the annual national inflation (year-on-year) stood at 9.60 percent up by 0.65% point from 8.95% in March 2021; and the monthly inflation is 2.73 percent up by 1.89 percentage point from 0.84 in March 2021.
He said that the March 2021 Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows that transportation has increased from 6.21 percent in March to 8.01 percent in April 2021 and the inflation rate increased by 1.80 percentage point year-on-year.
The Statistician General said food and non-alcoholic beverages increased from 15.45 percentage points in March 2021 to 15.64% in April 2021, of which the inflation rate increased by 0.19 percentage point year-on-year, adding that communication also declined by 1.01 percentage points from 3.25 percent in March 2021 to 3.24% in April 2021.
He furthered that two regions went up and two regions came down, up is the Western Region which moved from 7.90 percent in March 2021 to 8.11% in April 2021, adding that the Northern Region moved from 9.93 % in March 2021 to 12.79 % in April 2021.
He added that the Southern Region went down from 10.59% in March 2021 to 10.49% in April 2021, and the Eastern region also moved down from 8.57% in March to 7.51% in April 2021.
The national monthly CPI (2008=100) increased from 334.60 in March 2021 to 334.60 in April 2021 resulting to 2.73 percent inflation this month.
He maintained that April year-on-year national inflation rate indicates a slight increase but remains at a single digit and on a downwards trajectory; and is above the estimates of the Western and Eastern regions but below Southern and Northern region estimates, adding that food and non-food inflation rates went up by 0.19 and 0.79 percentage points respectively.
