By Ibrahim Joenal Sesay
FREETOWN, Aug 20 (SALONE TIMES) – The July 2021 Consumer Price Index (CPI) has jumped from 10.2 in June to 10.5% in July.
According to the Deputy Statistician General, Andrew Bob Johnny during his presentation of July 2021 CPI during a press briefing at their Statistic office in Freetown, on Wednesday 18th August 2021, the key findings of July 2021 CPI showed that annual national inflation as year on year stood at 10.50%, up by 0.30% points from 10.20% in June 2021 and the monthly inflation is 1.53% up by 0.8% points from 0.65% in June, 2021.
He said from January down to July they are in double digits 11.5% then they managed to dropped a beats to 10.87% in February and further down, they made a landmark in March with single digits of 8.95% then they started having threats in April and went up a bit by 9.6%. Then in May went up again to 9.8% in June to 10.2% and now in July is 10.5%.
He disclosed that the CPI methodology or CPI inflation is a measure of the average change over time, prices speed by largely urban consumers or in markets baskets of consumers goods and services.
He spoke about their guidelines and standard while thanking IMF and World Bank for giving a lot of support to them to make sure that they succeed in moving forward.
He disclosed further that the prizes are collected for 436 items identified in 2008 as they are still using 2008 index this year as the reference but plans to change the basket after the living standard survey which is done almost every five years.
He pointed out that all prices collected are the prevailing retail market prices and it’s also done on the weekly market outlets, 64 items, three times in the week.
“What are specific outlays for monthly and quarterly items whose prices are less likely to fluctuate rapidly, electricity, water supply, mobile, these are things we use almost every second.”
Meanwhile the people of Sierra Leone are going through serious hardship to the point that the price of basic commodities produced in Sierra Leone are now soaring with pepper going up to Le10,000 ($1).
