17 Feb 2022

The 10.6 per cent inflation rate Botswana recorded in January is the first in many years.

When delivering the budget speech recently,  Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Ms Peggy Serame said the then 8.7 per cent inflation rate was the country’s highest in a decade.

According to this week’s  Statistics Botswana report, for some time, the inflation rate  has been within the Bank of Botswana objective range of 3-6 per cent before increasing to 6.1 per cent in April 2021 and soaring to the current rate.

It increased by 1.9 per cent in January from the December 2021 rate of 8.7 per cent.

The report identifies transport, housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, food and non-alcoholic beverages, miscellaneous goods and services as main contributors to the January inflation rate.

It says in cities and towns, inflation rose by 2.1 percentage points from 8.6 per cent in December to 10.7 per cent in January.

For rural villages, inflation stood at 10.7 per cent in January indicating  a two percentage points rise on the December rate of 8.7 per cent.

In the case of urban villages, inflation increased by 1.6 percentage point from 8.8 per cent in December to 10.4 per cent in January.Explaining the cause of rising inflation, Ms Serame said global economic recovery from the 2020 COVID-19 recession caused demand for many goods and services to rise sharply in 2021, pushing up commodity prices and freight costs.

As a result, most countries were experiencing higher inflation.

She said inflation was expected to normalise during the course of this year. ENDS