The January price data show the headline cooling while transport, restaurants and housing outpaced it.

By Kanisa Magazine · January 2025

Congo’s headline inflation slid to 11.07 per cent by the last week of January, but the weekly detail shows prices still rising fastest where households have least room to cut. The INS national index, published in the Banque Centrale du Congo’s 29 January digest, was 11.69 per cent above its year-earlier level at the end of December and 11.07 per cent by week four, while the same index rose 0.81 per cent cumulatively across the month.

That is a long way from the 23.8 per cent recorded at the end of 2023, according to the IMF’s January country report. A single number, however, hides which prices are carrying the rise.

The hot week and the cool ones

The second week of January ran at an annualised 14 per cent; the third and fourth cooled to about 11 per cent.

Weekly price increases in the national series were 0.201 per cent, 0.305 per cent, 0.118 per cent and 0.186 per cent. Annualised, the second week came to 14.04 per cent and the others to about 11 per cent. Kinshasa’s own series reached 11.83 per cent year on year, a little warmer than the national figure. The jump in week two came from services and housing, not from food: restaurants and hotels rose 0.641 per cent that week, health 0.694 per cent and housing and utilities 0.478 per cent, against 0.253 per cent for food.

Which prices moved most

Transport and eating out gained the most over the month; food, the largest weight, moved least.

From the closing week of 2024 to the closing week of January 2025, the national transport index rose 1.63 per cent, restaurants and hotels 1.48 per cent, housing, water and energy 1.01 per cent and health 0.97 per cent. Food and non-alcoholic drinks gained 0.80 per cent, communications 0.24 per cent and education 0.25 per cent. Housing, water and energy has the highest index level of any group at 1,125 against a December 2011 base of 100, which means the housing-and-utilities price level is now eleven times its base-year level, against a little over four times for food.

What is not pushing prices

A steady franc and cheaper fuel took some pressure off imported goods this month.

The franc moved 0.2 per cent against the dollar across January, so imported goods were not repriced. Fuel has helped too. The BCC’s pump-price table, whose last entry is dated 3 October 2024, shows petrol at CDF 2,990.49 a litre for the first price zone it lists, against CDF 3,475 in April. The IMF puts the fiscal cost of the pump-price cut at US$10 million and records liabilities to oil companies at US$77 million in 2024, down from US$211 million in 2023. The Kinshasa markets survey by the IRES shows how quickly that can change: in the fourth week of December its food index rose 0.90 per cent in one week, as festive demand arrived.

The risk is supply, not the exchange rate

A cut road into a large city can lift food prices faster than any currency move.

Human Rights Watch reported that on 21 January M23 and Rwandan forces captured Minova, 40 kilometres from Goma, cutting a supply route to the city’s one to two million residents. The January digest closes on 24 January, so it records none of that effect. Wage pressure adds to the picture: the IMF attributes a half-point rise in the 2024 wage bill, as a share of GDP, to teacher pay increases and regularised recruitment, and warns that they may feed inflation.

What to do with an 11 per cent number

Price contracts to the lines that move, not to the headline.

For a retailer, caterer or logistics firm, the practical lesson is to index to components. Transport, restaurants and housing outpaced the headline by a wide margin in January, so a supplier contract escalated at 11 per cent a year understates the cost lines that matter most to a service business. The IMF expects inflation to reach the BCC’s 7 per cent target by the end of 2026, which would mean about four more points of disinflation. Budget for that path, but test any food-supply plan for eastern routes against a road closure.