{"id":73448,"date":"2019-01-21T10:33:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T08:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=73448"},"modified":"2019-01-21T10:33:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T08:33:42","slug":"inflation-back-to-single-digit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2019\/01\/21\/inflation-back-to-single-digit\/","title":{"rendered":"Inflation back to single digit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Taonga Sabola:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Just like a pendulum, Malawi\u2019s headline inflation swung back to single digit in December as it hit 9.9 percent after just a single month in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/double-digit-inflation-scare\/\">double digit<\/a> bracket, the National Statistical Office (NSO) has said.<\/p>\n<p>In November, headline inflation had threatened to runaway, hitting 10.1 percent as food and fuel prices surged.<\/p>\n<p>But two fuel price slashes in recent months have helped to ease pressure on prices.<\/p>\n<p>In its December inflation update released on Friday, NSO said headline inflation eased by 0.2 percentage points from 10.1 percent to 9.9 percent.<\/p>\n<p>The development means inflation averaged 9.2 percent in 2018 as compared to 11.5 percent in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>The Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) had predicted that inflation would average within the single digit bracket in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Though inflation fell in December, there are fears from the food market where prices of the staple food have started coming under pressure with the onset of the lean season.<\/p>\n<p>As at last week, a 50 Kilogramme bag of maize was selling at an average price of K10,000 in Blantyre up from K7,500 in November.<\/p>\n<p>But State-owned grain marketer, the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation, last week said Malawians should not panic during the lean period as it has enough maize at a price of K7,500 per 50kg bag.<\/p>\n<p>Commentators have also warned that inflation could come under pressure in the first half of the year due to spending associated with the May 21 elections.<\/p>\n<p>Malawi needs a low inflation regime to bring down interest rates which are among the highest in the region.<\/p>\n<p>With the policy rate at 16 percent and base lending rates of commercial banks averaging 23.5 percent, Malawians are paying around 30 percent and above to borrow from banks.<\/p>\n<p>Analysts believe it does not make business sense to borrow capital at such a high price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Taonga Sabola: Just like a pendulum, Malawi\u2019s headline inflation swung back to single digit in December as it hit 9.9 percent after just a single month in double digit bracket, the National Statistical Office (NSO) has said. In November, headline inflation had threatened to runaway, hitting 10.1 percent as food and fuel prices surged. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73449,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73448\/revisions\/73449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}