The Sudanese Central Bureau of Statistics revealed that the annual consumer price index fell to 117.4 percent at the end of last August, from about 125.4 percent in July.
This decline is the latest since the summer of last year, and is much lower than the government's expectations, which prepared this year's budget, in which it expects the inflation rate to reach nearly 202 percent by the end of 2022.
Inflation has been in three figures for more than two years, due to the collapse of the pound's exchange rate against the dollar, the scarcity of goods supplies and the lack of foreign exchange in the central bank. But consumer prices recorded in August remain much better than those recorded in July 2021, when inflation reached 422.8 percent.
The inflation rate has taken a downward trend since the second half of last year, after it peaked in July of 2020, a year that witnessed a wave of global closures due to the health crisis.
Last May, annual inflation growth slowed to 192 percent, down from 220.7 percent in the previous month. Nevertheless, inflation rates are still at the highest levels in the world, due to complex problems linked to the decline in the price of the pound to an average of 570 pounds from 375 pounds when the currency floated last March.
The International Monetary Fund ranks Sudan in the first place among the Arab countries with the highest consumer prices, followed by Yemen and Libya.
Source (Al-Arab Newspaper of London, Edited)
