Nigerian Inflation Slowed to 10.2% in June as Naira’s Gains Curb Imports

Nigerian inflation slowed to 10.2 percent in June as the naira gained to a four-month high against the dollar, curbing the cost of imported food in Africa’s most- populous nation.

The inflation rate fell from 12.4 percent in May, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement released in the capital, Abuja, today. Prices rose 1 percent in the month.

The naira climbed 2.8 percent against the dollar in June, with the interbank rate reaching as high as 152.275 on June 30 after the central bank lifted a curb on foreign investors’ bond holdings. That may ease pressure on the bank to raise its benchmark interest rate after increasing it three times this year to 8 percent.

“The relative appreciation in the dollar-naira rate in recent weeks should help contain exogenous price pressures and even support the downward trend in consumer prices in the second half,” Samir Gadio, an emerging markets strategist at Standard Bank Group Ltd. in London, said before today’s data.

The Central Bank of Nigeria, led by Governor Lamido Sanusi, is aiming to bring inflation down to below 10 percent. In order to curb price pressures, the bank sells foreign currency at bi- weekly auctions to help restrict the naira to within a range of 3 percent above or below 150 per dollar.

Bloomberg