Fall in Food Prices brings down Zambia’s Inflation for the August

Zambia’s annual inflation rate for August has slowed down to 15.5 percent from last month’s 15.8 percent owing to a fall in food prices.

Zambia Statistics Agency Interim Statistician-General Mulenga Musepa says the drop in food inflation to 15.5 percent from last month’s 16.1 is owing to a drop in prices of cereals like maize, mealie meal and vegetables among others.

Mr. Musepa however notes that non-food inflation has remained unchanged for a couple of months now.

Speaking during the agency’s monthly bulletin release in Lusaka recently, Mr. Musepa also revealed that Zambia last month recorded a 40.4 percent rise in trade.

He added that the country last month recorded a 4.5-billion-Kwacha trade surplus which translates into a 163.6 percent increase from June’s 1.7 billion- Kwacha surplus.

Mr. Musepa observed that Zambia’s imports partially reduced because of a reduction in imports of consumer goods in view of the Covid-19 outbreak.

He said the situation could however have been worse if Zambia had closed off its borders like many of its neighbours did.

And Mr. Musepa has revealed that the agency has received more tablets for conducting the Census next year, in addition to the 15,000 already in its custody.

He said only Muchinga, Central, Southern and Northern provinces are remaining for mapping, with works being at 80 percent completion.