Nairobi — Kenya's monthly inflation increased slightly to 8 percent in the month of May, attributed to high prices of food and non-food items.

The latest Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) shows that inflation went up by a slight margin of 0.1 percent from 7.9 percent in April.

An increase in food and non-food alcoholic beverages (10.2 percent), as well as housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels (9

7 percent) and transport (10.1 percent) contributed to this.

"The overall year on year inflation rate as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was 8.0 per cent, in May," KNBS says in the latest results.

In the review period, retail prices of sugar, carrots, onions, and beans shot up 22.1 percent, 6.3 percent, 5.1 percent, and 3.6 percent, respectively, between April and May.

Nonetheless, the costs of kale, cabbage, and avocado dropped by 7.4 percent, 5.7 percent, and 4.4 percent, respectively, in the review period.

"The housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels' index, increased by 0.7 percent between April 2023 and May 2023," it added.

"This was mainly due to increase in prices of kerosene by 10.2 percent between April 2023 and May 2023."

However, gas/LPG prices cooled down by 0.3 percent.

"The transport index went up by 1.2 percent between April 2023 and May 2023. This was mainly due to increase in prices of diesel and petrol by 3.8 percent and 1.8 percent respectively."