Q FM Africa's Modern Radio
The annual inflation for December, 2021 has decreased to 16.4 percent from 19.3 percent recorded in November 2021 indicating a decrease of 2.9 percentage points.
Disseminating the monthly inflation bulletin for December 2021, ZAMSTATs statistician general Mulenga Musepa said the decrease in annual inflation means that on average, prices of goods and services increased by 16.4 percent between December 2020 and December 2021.
Mr. Musepa has attributed the slowdown in annual inflation to favorable price movements in both food and non-food items.
And Mr. Musepa has further disclosed that the annual food inflation for December, 2021 was recorded at 19.9 percent compared to 25.4 percent recorded in November 2021, indicating a decrease of 5.5 percentage points.
He has attributed the decrease mainly to price movements in food items such as cereals fish vegetables coffee and baking powder.
Mr. Musepa reveals that Lusaka province contributed the highest at 4.6 percentage points to the overall annual inflation rate of 16.4 percent in December, 2021, followed by Copperbelt province contributing 3.8 percentage points while north-western and western provinces had the lowest contributions of 0.6 and 0.5 percentage points, respectively.
Meanwhile, Zambia’s gross domestic product (GDP) estimates for the third quarter of 2021 show that the economy grew by 3.5 percent, representing a 6.5 percentage points increase from minus 3 percent recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2020.
Mr. Musepa has attributed the growth recorded in the third quarter of 2021 to the performance of six industries which posted positive contributions to overall growth which included the information & communication, and construction which had the highest positive contributions to growth with 1.2 and 1.0 percentage points, respectively.
Meanwhile Zambia recorded a trade surplus of k7.2 billion in November 2021 compared to a surplus of k5.3 billion in October 2021; representing a 34.4 percent increase while the country’s cumulative total trade for the period January to November 2021 was recorded at k331 billion while that of 2020 for the same period was k215.6 billion, representing a 53.6 percent increase.