Ivory Coast Inflation Rate Rises to 1% in June, Agency Says

Consumer prices in Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producer, rose 1 percent in June from a year earlier as communication and housing costs increased, the statistics office said.

The inflation rate gained after falling 1.2 percent in May, the National Institute of Statistics, based in Abidjan, said in an e-mailed statement today. Prices rose 0.6 percent in the month.

Ivory Coast, the biggest economy in the eight-member West African monetary union, is recovering from a post-election crisis in 2011 that largely halted exports, shut banks and shops and forced the stock exchange to relocate to Mali.

The return to growth, forecast at 8.2 percent from a 4.7 percent contraction in 2011, is expected by the region’s central bank to lead output in the economic grouping that shares the euro-pegged CFA franc. The currency weakened 0.3 percent to 538.7 a dollar by 2:24 p.m. in Abidjan.

Food prices were little changed in June, rising 0.1 percent from a year earlier, while communication costs rose an annual 4.1 percent, the highest among the non-food groups, according to the agency. Prices for housing and utilities increased 3 percent from a year earlier while transportation costs fell 0.3 percent.

To contact the reporters on this story: Olivier Monnier in Abidjan at omonnier@bloomberg.net; Baudelaire Mieu in Abidjan at bmieu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emily Bowers at ebowers1@bloomberg.net