Annual consumer price inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was 3.8 per cent in May 2025.
This implies that the general price level was 3.8 per cent higher in May 2025 than it was in May 2024. The price increase was primarily driven by a rise in prices of items in the Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages (6.3%); Transport (2.3%), and Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and other fuels (0.8%) over the one year.
These three divisions together account for over 57 per cent of the total weight across the 13 major expenditure categories.
The CPI measures the cost of purchasing a fixed basket of goods and services, comparing current prices to those of a base period (February 2019). The inflation rate is derived from data collected through a monthly survey of retail prices that targets a representative basket of household goods and services, with data gathered during the second and third weeks of the month, from a statistically representative sample of outlets in urban areas across 50 data collection zones nationwide.
The overall index increased from 144.09 in April 2025 to 144.88 in May 2025, resulting in a monthly inflation of 0.5 per cent.
Prices of food items in May 2025
Meanwhile, the Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages Index increased by 1.2 per cent between April 2025 and May 2025. Notably, prices of potatoes (Irish), oranges and fresh packaged cow milk dropped by 3.7, 1.8 and 0.6 per cent, respectively, between April 2025 and May 2025.
In the same period, prices of sugar, maize flour sifted, and kale- Sukuma wiki rose by 4.3, 3.9 and 3.5 per cent, respectively, as presented in Table 3, which provides national average prices of selected items.
The Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels’ Index had a negligible change between April 2025 and May 2025. During the same period, the price of a 50 kWh unit of electricity and a 200 kWh unit of electricity declined by 1.0 per cent and 0.9 per cent.
In addition, the price of gas/LPG dropped by 0.5 per cent over the same period.
The Transport Index rose by 0.2 per cent between April 2025 and May 2025, mainly attributable to an increase in prices of international flights. However, Prices of petrol and diesel remained the same in the review period
