{"id":23243,"date":"2020-01-16T10:15:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T08:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/?p=23243"},"modified":"2020-01-16T10:15:01","modified_gmt":"2020-01-16T08:15:01","slug":"ncpi-december-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/ncpi-december-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"NCPI \u2013 December 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Namibian annual inflation rate increased marginally to 2.6% in December, following the 2.5% y\/y increase in prices recorded in December. Prices in the overall NCPI basket decreased by 0.1% m\/m. The annual average inflation rate for 2019 was 3.7%, compare to 4.3% in 2018 and 6.2% in 2017. On a year-on-year basis, overall prices in seven of the twelve basket categories rose at a quicker rate in December than in November, with three categories recording slower rates of inflation and two categories recorded increases consistent with the prior month. Prices for goods increased by 2.0% y\/y while prices for services increased by 3.4% y\/y. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In December the housing and utilities category was once again\nthe largest contributor to annual inflation due to its large weighting in the\nbasket, accounting for 0.5 percentage points of the total 2.6% annual inflation\nrate. Price inflation for this category came in at 1.9% y\/y for a third\nconsecutive month and remained relatively flat month-on-month. Prices in the\nelectricity, gas and other fuels subcategory remained flat m\/m, but declined by\n0.8% y\/y. The regular maintenance and repair of dwellings subcategory registered\nan increase in prices of 5.0% y\/y. Month-on-month, prices in this subcategory fell\nby 0.7%. Annual inflation for rental payments remained unchanged at 2.3% y\/y in\nDecember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The education basket recorded inflation of 12.0% y\/y,\nwith the cost of pre-primary and primary education growing at a rate of 12.6%\ny\/y, while secondary- and tertiary education recorded price increases of 11.0%\ny\/y and 12.7% y\/y, respectively. All three subcategories printed no price\nincreases on a month-on-month basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The alcohol and tobacco category displayed a decrease of 0.1%\nm\/m, but an increase of 3.2% y\/y. The main driver in this basket category was\nalcohol prices which increased by 4.9% y\/y while tobacco prices were down 4.3%\ny\/y.  A 7.8% m\/m decrease in tobacco prices, recorded in May,\nis the cause for annual decrease in tobacco prices. The Namibia Statistics\nAgency (NSA) has not provided any explanation for this decrease in any of its\nbulletins since May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The zonal data shows that prices fell by 0.3% m\/m in the\nnorthern regions, and by 0.1% m\/m in the east, south and western regions, while\nrising by 0.1% m\/m in the central region. On an annual basis, the Central\nregion recorded the lowest inflation rate at 2.2% in December, with the mixed\nzone 3 covering the south, east and west of the country recording the highest\nrate of inflation at 3.3%. Inflation in the northern region of the country increased\nto 2.5% y\/y.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Namibian annual\ninflation rate of 2.6% for December continues to trend lower than that of\nneighbouring South Africa\u2019s November inflation figure of 3.6%. Inflationary\npressure in Namibia has been particularly low in the second half of 2019 due to\na lack of demand for both goods and services. IJG\u2019s inflation model forecasts\nan average inflation rate of 3.5% y\/y in 2020. The largest upside risk to this\nforecast is higher food costs and fuel prices. Although the northern and\ncentral regions received an encouraging amount of rainfall in December, large\nparts of the southern region are yet to receive their first rains. Food prices\nwill likely increase if the country experiences another year of below average rainfall.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geopolitical\ntension between the US and Iran seems to have calmed down (for the moment at\nleast) and the price of Brent Crude oil has \u2018normalised\u2019 at US$64 at the time\nof writing after spiking to US$71 last week. However, peace in the middle east is\nall-but-certain and the situation can escalate within the wink of an eye, which\nwill send the price of oil up again. Another potential risk for the oil price is\nif OPEC goes ahead with the implementation of its plan to cut production by\n500,000 barrels per day. Such shocks in the oil price will result in the\nMinistry of Mines and Energy increasing fuel pump prices for Namibians which\nwill translate into higher transport inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Namibian annual inflation rate increased marginally to 2.6% in December, following the 2.5% y\/y increase in prices recorded in December. Prices in the overall NCPI basket decreased by 0.1% m\/m. The annual average inflation rate for 2019 was 3.7%, compare to 4.3% in 2018 and 6.2% in 2017. On \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economicresearch","category-inflation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23250,"href":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23243\/revisions\/23250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ijg.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}