Food and drink push inflation

The July 2016 annual inflation rate stood at 7%t as compared to 3.3% registered in July a year earlier, according to statistics released by the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) on Thursday.
The NSA said the increase in the general price levels over the year emanated mainly from Food and non-alcoholic beverages (12.2%), Housing, water, electricity and other fuels (8.2%), Education (7.6%), Alcoholic beverages and tobacco (6.6%) and Health (6.4%).
According to the agency, on a monthly basis inflation increased from 0.3% recorded in June 2016 to 0.6% in July 2016.
“The monthly inflation rate increases emanated from Food and non-alcoholic beverages which increased from -0.6 to 1%; Housing, water ,electricity, gas and other fuels from 0.1% to 0.9%; Health from -0.4% to 0.1%; and Recreation and culture from -0.1% to 0.3%,” stated the NSA.
Overall the monthly and annual inflation rates for Goods were estimated at 0.8% and 7.4%, respectively, while those for Services stood at 0.4% and 6.5 % respectively.
The NSA said this indicates that average prices of Goods continued to accelerate faster than those of Services during the period June 2016 and July 2016 as well as between July 2015 and July 2016.