By Alfred Koroma
Recent World Bank Data shows food price inflation is hitting the hardest and Sierra Leone is among the top ten countries hit hardest by food inflation.
Sierra Leone is ranked 10th on the list, but it is doing better than other African countries ranked on the list – these include Ghana, Rwanda, Egypt and Zimbabwe. The worst inflation hit country is Lebanon which tops the list followed by Zimbabwe and Argentina, Iran, Turkiye, Egypt, Rwanda, Ghana and Suriname respectively.
World Bank ranked the recent top 10 countries with the highest food price inflation using available data between December 2022 and March 2023.
Food Price Inflation measured as year-on-year change in the food component of a country’s Consumer Price Index (CPI)) remains high World Bank says.
And information from the latest months for which food price inflation data are available shows high inflation in almost all low- and middle-income countries, with inflation levels above 5 percent in 82.4 percent of low-income countries. Food price inflation exceeded overall inflation in 90.7 percent of the 162 countries for which food CPI and overall CPI indexes are both available.
Many countries are experiencing double-digit inflation with the most-affected countries being in Africa, North America, Latin America, South Asia, Europe, and Central Asia, World Bank reports.
The food inflation remains rampant in developing countries in early 2023, contributing to a high cost of living, UNCTAD also highlighted in a new report published last week.
FAO Chief Economist Máximo Torero warned high food prices put food security in peril, particularly in net food importing developing countries, with the situation aggravated by the depreciation of their currencies against the US dollar or the Euro and mounting debt burden, UN News reports.
