Kenya Inflation

Inflation picks up in May from April

Latest reading: Consumer prices rose 6.7% on a year-on-year basis in May, following a 5.6% rise in the prior month. May's reading was the strongest since January 2024, coming in above market expectations. Relative to the previous month's figures, there were higher price pressures for food and non-alcoholic beverages (+9.4% on a year-on-year basis vs +8.8% in April), housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (+3.4% vs +2.4% in April), transportation (+16.5% vs +10.0% in April) and clothing (+2.0% vs +1.9% in April). Finally, consumer prices increased 1.58% in May in month-on-month terms, following a 1.43% increase in the previous month.

Panelist insight: On their inflation outlook, Oxford Economics analysts said: “We have lifted our 2026 CPI forecast by 0.3 ppt to an average of 6.6%, driven by the sharp increase in pump prices in mid-April and by the government’s indication that it has limited scope to provide further relief beyond reducing VAT on fuel.”

How should you choose a forecaster if some are too optimistic while others are too pessimistic? FocusEconomics collects Kenyan inflation projections for the next ten years from a panel of 15 analysts at the leading national, regional and global forecast institutions. These projections are then validated by our in-house team of economists and data analysts and averaged to provide one Consensus Forecast you can rely on for each indicator. By averaging all forecasts, upside and downside forecasting errors tend to cancel each other out, leading to the most reliable inflation forecast available for Kenyan inflation.

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