From Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said that the headline inflation rate in April eased to 23.71 per cent, relative to the March 2025 headline inflation rate of 24.23 per cent, due to a drop in the price of grains and other food items.
In its website publication, the bureau said that looking at the movement, the April 2025 headline inflation rate showed a decrease of 0.52 per cent compared to the March 2025 headline inflation rate.
However, on a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 9.99 per cent lower than the rate recorded in April 2024 (33.69 per cent).
“This shows that the headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) decreased in April 2025 compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., April 2024), though with a different base year, November 2009 = 100.
“Furthermore, on a month-on-month basis, the headline inflation rate in April 2025 was 1.86 per cent, which was 2.04 per cent lower than the rate recorded in March 2025 (3.90 per cent). This means that in April 2025, the rate of increase in the average price level is lower than the rate of increase in the average price level in March 2025,” NBS said.
Meanwhile, the food inflation rate in April 2025 was 21.26 per cent on a year-on-year basis. This was 19.27 percentage points lower compared to the rate recorded in April 2024 (40.53 per cent).
“The significant decline in the food annual inflation figure is technically due to the change in the base year. However, on a month-on-month basis, the food inflation rate in April 2025 was 2.06 per cent, down by 0.12 per cent compared to March 2025 (2.18 per cent). The decrease can be attributed to the rate of decrease in the average prices of maize (corn) flour, wheat grain, okra (dried), yam flour, soya beans, rice, Bambara beans, brown beans, etc.”
The average annual rate of food inflation for the twelve months ending April 2025 over the previous twelve-month average was 31.43 per cent, which was 1.31 percentage points lower compared with the average annual rate of change recorded in April 2024 (32.74 per cent).
The “all items less farm produce and energy”, or core inflation, which excludes the prices of volatile agricultural produce and energy, stood at 23.39 per cent in April 2025 on a year-on-year basis; it declined by 3.45 per cent when compared to the 26.84 per cent recorded in April 2024. On a month-on-month basis, the core inflation rate was 1.34 per cent in April 2025, down by 2.39 per cent compared to March 2025 (3.73 per cent).
“The average twelve-month annual inflation rate was 24.91 per cent for the twelve months ending April
2025, which was 2.07 percent points higher than the 22.84 per cent recorded in April 2024,” the bureau further explained.