CAPMAS: Egypt’s Urban Inflation Accelerates to 10.4% in October

Egypt’s urban consumer inflation accelerated in October, driven by higher consumer spending on food and transportation, the state statistics agency – the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) reported on Sunday.

CAPMAS said inflation rose to an annual 10.4 percent in October from 10.1 percent in September.

Egyptian inflation has been pushed up this year by a weaker Egyptian pound, though the currency has steadily appreciated against the dollar since the army deposed elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi on July 3.

“This is a big rise for inflation within one month,” CAPMAS head Abu Bakr al-Gindy told Reuters. “According to our statistics there was an obvious increase in the prices of meat, other food products and transportation.”

Gindy attributed the increase in the prices of meat to high demand last month’s religious Eid al-Adha holiday, when Muslims are required to distribute free meat to the poor.

Transportation prices, Gindy said, increased as more people are travelling from one city to another to study since start of the academic year in mid-September.

More Egyptians are using buses and taxis to compensate for the halt in train services due to security measures. That has driven up the price of transportation.

Authorities have imposed a state of emergency and a nighttime curfew since Aug. 14 after the crushing of pro-Mursi protest camps triggered nationwide clashes.