Inflation rate ‘will fall’ for the first time in 15 months

The Economic Intelligence Group forecasts that, for the first time in 15 months, inflation rate (year-on-year) will decline in February 2017 to 18.1% from 18.7% announced in January 2017.

The nation’s inflation rate, which has been on the rise since October 2015, is currently pegged at 18.72% with interest rate at 14%.

Analysts attributed the predicted dip to base effects, which is the influence of the consumer price changes of the corresponding month of the previous year (February 2016 in this case) on the changes in the annual inflation of the current year’s respective month.

“Our methodology adopts an autoregressive analysis of past prices, while it recognizes all the assumptions used by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in its computation of monthly composite consumer price index (CCPI).

“We forecast inflation rate (year-on-year) to decline to 18.1% from 18.7% reached in January 2017.

“From our investigation, there was an increase of 3.8 points in the consumer price index (CPI) to 219.5 points in February 2017 from January, a slower increase compared to the rise in the corresponding period of 2016 when the CPI rose by 4.19 points to 185.89 points in February 2016 from the January 2016 number,” the statement by the intelligence group read.

“Largely, the slow rate of change forecasted for February 2017 is due to the higher CPI base witnessed in 2016. Recall, there was an FX depreciation of about 11.7% at the unofficial market in February 2016. The pass-through effect of this depreciation impacted market prices and consequently CPI.

“The base effect-led decline in inflation rate is expected to mask the moderate price increases of goods and services during the review period. The core-sub index which has declined for two consecutive months is also expected to continue on its downward trajectory as prices under groups such as communication, restaurants and hotels are expected to remain muted or ease marginally.

“Given that yields may likely drop as inflation is expected to track lower and following the recent government policy barring investors with N50 million and below from investing in treasury bills, retail investors may likely migrate to the newly launched government savings bonds and money market instruments.

“Lower inflation rate will have a positive impact on real rate of return, as the real rate inches closer to cross over from the negative territory to a positive terrain.”

Analysts advise the monetary policy committee to “re-evaluate it’s stance as regards the bench mark interest rate and adopt an accomodative position at its upcoming MPC meeting.”

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is expected to release the inflation figure for February 2017 on March 15, based on the data release calendar available on its website.