RBM justifies Comesa harmonised inflation rate
Malawi’s inflation rate increased to 10.6 percent in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) harmonised rate for January, a development the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) has said is due to the use of different weights.
During the same period, the country’s inflation rate as recorded by the National Statistical Office (NSO) stood at 8.1 percent.
Currently, the inflation rate is at 7.8 percent as of February 2018, according to the NSO.
The Comesa Harmonised Consumer Price Index (HCPI) released over the weekend, shows that Malawi’s inflation rate slightly rose by 0.4 percentage points in January from 10.2 percent the previous month.
In the same period, the region’s average jumped to 21.5 percent from 21.1 percent the previous month.
However, Malawi’s inflation rate in January remained below the region’s average.
In an interview yesterday, Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) spokesperson Mbane Ngwira justified the difference, saying Comesa rates are harmonised; hence, everything is standardised.
“Our weights are different from any other country and we do not harmonise. Hence, we cannot compare such figures with those published locally because we do not standardise,” he said.
According to RBM, the monetary policy stance during the first half of 2018 will focus on entrenching disinflation and attaining the targeted five percent inflation rate in the medium-term and maintain a minimum of three months of import cover of official foreign exchange reserves, which are held by the central bank to prop up the local currency.
