Gaborone — After remaining steady at 6.4 percent between May and June, headline inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), rose sharply in July, increasing by 1.1 percent to 7.5 percent.

This was mainly the result of the increase in fuel prices at the beginning of July, which caused the transport sub-index (which has a weight of 19.0 percent in the CPI basket) to rise by 4.7 percent. Other indices that recorded significant upward movements were food (1.7 percent), housing (1.0 percent), and restaurants and hotels (1.7 percent).

However, stable and falling prices in other commodity groups reduced the impact of these increases on overall inflation. By tradability, inflation for tradable goods and services rose by 1.6 percent to 8.8 percent from 7.2 percent in June, while for non-tradables the increase was 0.1 percent from 4.7 percent to 4.8 percent.

The trimmed mean measure of core inflation was 6.8 percent in July, up 0.7 percent from 6.1 percent in June. Excluding administered prices (which include fuel prices), inflation fell by 0.8 percent, from 6.8 to 6.0 percent. (Bank of Botswana)