According to Statistics Botswana, headline inflation decreased slightly from 3.2 percent in September to 3.1 percent in October 2023, remaining within the Bank’s medium-term objective range of 3 – 6 percent, and was significantly lower than the 13.1 percent in October 2022. The slight decrease in inflation between September and October 2023 was mainly due to the broad-based deceleration in the rate of annual price change for the ‘Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages’ category. Meanwhile, there were partially offsetting movements in the annual price changes for some categories of goods and services, while for the rest, prices were unchanged. Inflation for domestic tradeables decreased from 6.2 percent to 5.4 percent between September and October 2023, due to a broad-based deceleration in food price increases. Similarly, imported tradeables inflation eased from 2.3 percent to 2.1 percent in the same period. As a result, all tradeables inflation decreased from 3.3 percent in September to 3 percent in October 2023. Meanwhile, inflation for non-tradeables increased slightly from 3 percent to 3.1 percent in the same period.
Similarly, the 16 percent trimmed mean inflation and inflation excluding administered prices decreased from 3.3 percent and 5.2 percent to 3.2 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively, in the same period.