Annual inflation is falling because of a high base, while weekly prints creep upward.

By Kanisa Magazine · June 2025

Kinshasa’s prices rose 4.0 per cent in the 24 weeks to mid-June 2025, but the basket did not rise evenly. Transport climbed 6.6 per cent, housing and energy 4.9 per cent, restaurants and hotels 4.5 per cent and food 4.3 per cent, while health, communications and education barely moved, at between 0.3 and 0.5 per cent. The average hides a split between what households must buy every week and what they buy rarely, and the weekly prints have begun to creep up.

The BCC’s digest, built on data from the national statistics institute, is the source for every figure that follows.

Annual inflation fell, but the weekly pace did not

A falling twelve-month rate can coexist with a rising weekly pace when last year’s base was high.

Kinshasa’s twelve-month rate stood at 8.8 per cent in the second week of June, down from 12.5 per cent at the end of 2024. The national rate was 8.5 per cent. The IMF noted in mid-May that April had brought the first single-digit annual reading in nearly three years.

The weekly rate tells a less comfortable story. Kinshasa prices rose 0.117 per cent in the last week of May, then 0.176 per cent and 0.181 per cent in the first two weeks of June. At 0.18 per cent a week, prices would rise about 9.8 per cent over a year, higher than the 8.8 per cent now showing. May’s monthly rise was 0.67 per cent, an annual pace of about 8.3 per cent. The annual rate is falling because June 2024 was a high base, with a monthly rise of 1.38 per cent, not because prices have stopped climbing.

Where the pressure sits

Transport, housing and restaurants lead; the services households buy rarely lag.

Comparing the Kinshasa index at the end of 2024 with the second week of June gives the ranking: transport 6.6 per cent, housing, water and energy 4.9 per cent, restaurants and hotels 4.5 per cent, miscellaneous goods and services 4.3 per cent, food 4.3 per cent, alcohol and tobacco 3.1 per cent, leisure 1.9 per cent, clothing 1.6 per cent and furnishings 1.1 per cent. Health, communications and education all rose by less than 0.6 per cent.

The ordering is a clue to the mechanism. Items that depend on frequent purchases and local supply lead, while items priced by contract or by regulation lag. Food at 4.3 per cent in 24 weeks is an annual pace near 9.6 per cent, in line with the aggregate rather than below it.

Fuel did not cause it

Pump prices in the west have been fixed for months, which makes the transport index harder to explain.

The BCC’s table of petroleum prices, taken from the economy ministry, shows the west zone, which includes Kinshasa, at CDF 2,990.49 a litre for petrol after the last change on 3 October 2024, down from CDF 3,440 in May 2024. Pump prices in the east zone fell from CDF 4,220 in April 2024 to CDF 3,776. Fuel therefore cannot account for a 6.6 per cent rise in transport.

The digest does not break the transport index into fares, vehicles and air tickets, so the cause is not visible. Candidates include fares, vehicle prices and air tickets, none of which the digest separates. What the numbers do rule out is a currency explanation, since the franc moved only 0.3 per cent in the past year, and a fuel explanation, which leaves costs along the supply chain as the likeliest source.

The sharper picture elsewhere

Kinshasa’s basket understates what conflict zones pay for staples.

The World Food Programme reported in March that maize flour, palm oil and cassava flour in eastern provinces had risen by as much as 37 per cent since December 2024, compared with the single-digit annual pace in the capital’s index. The two numbers measure different places, and an investor reading only the Kinshasa series would miss the gap.

What to do with the signal

Price off the weekly print, not the annual rate, and segment by basket.

For retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers selling to households, the signal is to build price lists around the weekly pace, which is the fresher number, and to expect an annual rate that stabilises near 9 per cent rather than falling much further. Wage reviews should be set against the staples-heavy basket, not the headline. The decisive step for consumer-facing firms in June is to rebase the contracts that carry indexation, since a 0.18 per cent weekly drift will recompute the whole year’s cost base by December.