Maputo — Mozambique’s inflation rate in January, calculated from the consumer price indices of the three largest cities, Maputo, Beira and Nampula, was 1.35 per cent, the National Statistics Institute (INE) announced on Thursday.

This is the highest inflation in a single month since December 2011, when the rate was 1.38 per cent. It is more than twice as high as the inflation rate for January 2012, which was 0.64 per cent.

The food items which showed the largest price increases during the month were coconuts (30 per cent), potatoes (10.5 per cent), unmilled maize (11.1 per cent), cooking oil (3.7 per cent) and frozen fish (2.2 per cent). These items drove the food and non-alcoholic drinks component of the consumer price index up by 1.02 per cent.

The second most important rise in the index was for education, which increased by 0.15 per cent. This was caused by a sharp rise in the costs (19.01 per cent) of the initial grades of secondary education.

The average 12 monthly inflation rate between February 2012 and January 2013 was 2.41 per cent.

These figures are well within the government’s inflation targets. Last year the government’s target for the average 12 monthly inflation rates was 5.6 per cent, and the figure actually achieved was 2.6 per cent.

This year the target is for an annual inflation rate of no more than seven per cent.

The pattern in the recent period is that inflation has been quite large in January, falls sharply in the middle of the year, then rises again in the last couple of months.