NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenya’s inflation slowed in August, helped by a month-on-month fall in food prices, the statistics office said on Thursday.
Inflation was 6.7% year-on-year in August from 7.3% a month earlier, while on a monthly basis inflation was -0.1% from 0.1% a month earlier, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement.
Kenya’s government has a preferred inflation band of 2.5%-7.5% in the medium term.
When the year-on-year inflation rate fell in July, it was the first time it had return to within the government’s preferred band since May 2022.
The statistics office said the food and non-alcoholic beverages index fell by 0.5% in August from a month earlier. The index has a 32.91% weighting in calculating Kenyan inflation.
Earlier this month, the central bank held its benchmark lending rate at 10.5%, citing falling inflation.
(Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Alexander Winning)
