Annual inflation has dropped for four months, but prices still rise 0.6 per cent a month.

By Kanisa Magazine · April 2025

National consumer-price inflation fell to 9.96 per cent a year in the fourth week of April 2025, in the series the BCC reproduces from the national statistics institute, the INS. In Kinshasa the annual rate was 10.46 per cent, down from 12.49 per cent on the last day of 2024. For households the more useful number is the pace: prices rose 0.57 per cent over the month.

The fall in the annual rate is partly a base effect and partly real. Telling them apart is the whole job for anyone setting prices or pay for the next two quarters.

Four months of slowing

Kinshasa’s annual rate has dropped every month since December, but monthly increases have levelled out.

The INS Kinshasa series shows the annual rate at 12.49 per cent at the end of December, 11.76 per cent at the end of January, 11.28 per cent in February, 10.74 per cent in March and 10.46 per cent in the fourth week of April. Monthly increases were 1.04 per cent in January, 0.65 per cent in February, 0.63 per cent in March and 0.57 per cent in April. That is a steady slowdown, but the monthly pace is now settling near 0.6 per cent. At that speed prices compound to about 7 per cent a year.

The national index tells a parallel story. It rose 0.568 per cent in April, 0.611 per cent in March, and its cumulative rise since the start of the year was 2.94 per cent by the fourth week of April.

Why the annual rate fell faster than the monthly rate

The year-ago months being dropped from the calculation were the expensive ones.

An annual rate compares today’s index with the same week a year earlier. Kinshasa’s rate stood at 23.10 per cent in May 2024, so the big monthly increases of mid-2024 are rolling out of the comparison. The BCC data shows weekly increases in Kinshasa of 0.23 to 0.59 per cent in June 2024, against 0.12 to 0.17 per cent in April 2025. As those months leave the window, the annual rate falls mechanically, and it will keep falling through the middle of the year even if prices do not slow further.

The second force is the exchange rate. The franc moved within a CDF 14 band in April, at about CDF 2,855 per dollar. In an economy that prices imports in dollars, that stability is the main reason monthly pass-through has stayed below 1 per cent.

What households feel

Staples inside the index rose 0.97 per cent in six weeks while eastern prices ran higher.

The BCC’s national index by function shows food and non-alcoholic beverages rising from 428.74 in the tenth week of the year to 432.89 in the sixteenth, a 0.97 per cent gain, roughly 0.16 per cent a week. That is stable pricing by the standards of recent years.

The national average hides a sharp divide. The WFP, publishing the latest IPC analysis on 27 March, said food prices had risen by up to 37 per cent against pre-crisis levels in conflict-affected areas, and that 27.7 million people faced acute food insecurity. Those figures are the agency’s; the INS series covers prices where it collects them, and the eastern provinces and areas under M23 control are the hardest to measure.

Pricing in a 10 per cent economy

Real rates are high, so the cost of money, not of goods, is the main pressure on firms.

The BCC’s policy rate was held at 25 per cent at the committee meeting on 30 January, and its table in the April digest puts the real policy rate at 14.82 per cent. With inflation below 10 per cent, a rate of 25 per cent is a tight setting. Firms that borrow in francs pay a premium that dwarfs the 0.6 per cent monthly price drift.

Three actions follow. Retailers with franc price lists can hold them for the quarter, because April’s pass-through does not justify a repricing round. Employers negotiating wage reviews can anchor on the 7 per cent run-rate rather than on last year’s 20 per cent-plus. And borrowers will press for a lower policy rate, which the committee has not signalled. The risk to watch is a reversal in the franc, since stable prices rest on a stable exchange rate.