• More than 10% increase in January 2022
• It cumulates to 17.8% at the end of the year
LConsumer prices increased by 17.8% during the year 2022 in Burkina Faso. The cost of food explains a large part of this surge. However, the price increase spread to all properties.
It runs, it runs, inflation… And nothing has managed to slow it down. 10% in January 2020, 18% from July, to end the year with 17.8%. According to INSD data, at the beginning of the year, the increase was confined to a few raw materials, such as food products and non-alcoholic beverages. From now on, the waltz of labels has gone everywhere, on the shelves of supermarkets, at our local merchants, etc. Soaring wheat flour prices, or prices at the pump.
Faced with this crisis, everyone is doing their part. The Central Bank, she played firefighters. Not by authorizing the circulation of more banknotes on the local market, but on the contrary by raising interest rates, in an attempt to close the floodgates of credit and thus fight inflation. The last increase dates from December 2022, the 3e of the year.
The BCEAO Monetary Policy Committee (CPM) had decided to raise the Central Bank’s key rates by 25 basis points, effective December 16, 2022. From now on, the main key rate at which the Central Bank lends its resources to banks goes from 2.50% to 2.75%. According to the Central Bank press release, the increase in the bank’s key rates aims to counter inflation in the WAEMU zone.
The objective is to reduce the money supply within the economy, to fight once morest inflation. Basically, making credit more expensive.
As the rise in interest rates alone does not solve all the problems linked to inflation, the government has also taken action. In June, the latter injected 14.3 billion FCFA, in order to contain the inflation of consumer products. Thus, products such as “rice, sugar and oil” were selected and their customs values fell.
Another measure is the control of local cereal storage places, in order to encourage their availability to the population so as not to create mechanical inflation due to the retention of these cereals. For their part, private actors and leaders of the Consumer League, despite their arrests, were unable to prevent the rise in fuel prices at the pump. Despite these measures, this evolution of the Consumer Price Index is the highest in the Uemoa zone. In comparison, our neighbors Côte d’Ivoire are at 6%, 3.5% for Niger and 0.7% for Togo. The last time our country exceeded a double-digit inflation rate was in 2008 (10 to 11%). o
NK
