The BCC’s weekly index shows annual inflation jumping to 13.4 per cent nationally as the year opened.

By Kanisa Magazine · January 2023

In the first three weeks of January the Banque Centrale du Congo’s retail price index for Kinshasa rose 2.2 per cent, and the national index 2.0 per cent. Annual inflation on the national measure climbed from 11.6 per cent in the last week of December to 13.4 per cent in the week to 21 January, and in Kinshasa from 14.1 to 16.1 per cent. Households felt it first in fares and in the price of cassava.

A January reading is more than a statistic. Contracts, school fees, rents and wage talks are reset in this month, and the BCC’s weekly numbers show what they are being reset against.

What moved in Kinshasa

Transport services rose 6.5 per cent in three weeks and tubers 4.0 per cent.

The BCC’s index runs on a base of December 2018 equal to 100. Between the week to 1 January and the week to 22 January the Kinshasa headline moved from 178.9 to 182.8. Food and non-alcoholic drinks rose 2.1 per cent. Within them, potatoes, cassava and plantain, the staples of the city’s table, rose 4.0 per cent from 311.0 to 323.6. Vegetables added 2.7 per cent and oils and fats 2.1 per cent.

Services pushed harder. Transport services climbed 6.5 per cent, medicines 4.0 per cent and electricity, gas and other fuels 2.6 per cent. Education and communications moved least, at 0.9 and 1.1 per cent. The pattern is of costs that households cannot defer rising fastest, while discretionary items lag. National transport services rose only 2.4 per cent over the same weeks, so the capital’s fare increase ran at more than two and a half times the national rate.

What moved in Goma

Energy items in Goma rose 5.1 per cent, ahead of the 4.0 per cent national rate.

In Goma, energy items rose 5.1 per cent in the same three weeks, vegetables 4.3 per cent and meat 3.8 per cent. The city’s annual inflation rate was 18.2 per cent in the week to 21 January, above the national 13.4 per cent, and its weekly food index jumped 1.4 per cent in the last week alone.

Context matters here. M23 announced on 23 December that it would cede its Kibumba positions to the East African regional force, according to Africanews, but the group still held other territory and fighting continued in January. The BCC does not attribute price moves to the security situation, and the digest cannot separate the effects of supply routes from those of the dollar. What the numbers do show is that cities in the east saw faster energy and food inflation than the national average.

The annual rate keeps climbing

The BCC’s annualised figure of 42 per cent overstates the risk, but the trend is real.

The BCC reports an annualised national rate of 41.9 per cent for the week to 21 January and 46.7 per cent for Kinshasa. These are projections of the three-week pace to a full year, and a January spike rarely repeats twelve times. The more reliable signal is the annual rate: 13.4 per cent nationally and 16.1 per cent in Kinshasa, with Lubumbashi at 20.3 per cent and Mbuji-Mayi at 21.9 per cent. Prices are rising unevenly, and the spread between Mbandaka at 5.1 per cent and Mbuji-Mayi runs to 17 points.

The central bank’s own policy position gives little cover. Its rate was 8.25 per cent after the 24 November decision, which AWA Afrika reported with a forecast of about 11 per cent inflation for end-December and a possible 12.9 per cent. The BCC’s table put the real rate at minus 6.7 per cent by 20 January.

How to price the next quarter

Index contracts to the BCC series, and budget for transport first.

For employers, the hardest lesson is that the basket that matters most to staff, transport and staples, is running ahead of the headline. A pay review calibrated to 13 per cent will undershoot what a Kinshasa worker experiences. For suppliers selling to households, the safest assumption is further increases in the weeks ahead, since the policy rate is below inflation and the weekly cumulative rate stood at 2.2 per cent after three weeks.

Rents rose 2.6 per cent in Kinshasa over the same three weeks, so leases are repricing too. Firms with annual price lists should add an indexation clause tied to the BCC’s weekly national index and review it quarterly.