List Of Commodities Whose Price Are Set To Rise
Electricity bills, beef, potatoes and mangoes all cost more last month, and that was enough to push Kenya’s inflation rate to 6.5 percent in July, even though a handful of everyday items, among them tomatoes, maize flour and cooking gas, actually got a little cheaper.
That is according to the Consumer Price Index and Inflation Report, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics put out on Friday, July 31.
The headline number moved only slightly, from 6.4 percent in June to 6.5 percent in July, but the takeaway is simple enough: prices, on average, were 6.5 percent higher than they were in July last year.
“Annual consumer price inflation was 6.5 percent in July 2026, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI),” KNBS said in the report, adding that this meant the general price level was 6.5 percent higher than a year earlier.
The agency blamed the uptick mostly on food. Food and non-alcoholic beverages rose 9.0 per cent over the year, transport climbed a much sharper 15.6 percent, and the housing, water, electricity, gas and fuels basket was up 3.2 percent.
Not everything went up, though. Tomatoes were the biggest mover on the way down, shedding 3.7 percent, with carrots not far off at 3.6 percent. A 2kg packet of sifted maize flour eased 1.6 per cent, and the fortified version slipped 1.2 percent. Refilling a 13kg gas cylinder got 1.1 per cent cheaper too, while beans and cooking oil both nudged down slightly.
On the flip side, electricity was one of the sharpest risers for the month; the 50-kWh band went up 3.5 percent, and the 200-kWh band climbed 3.1 percent. Mangoes rose 3.2 percent, potatoes 2.1 percent, and sukuma wiki, beef, onions, sugar and fresh packeted milk all crept up as well.
Fuel, at least, didn’t move. Petrol held at Ksh214.95 a litre and diesel at Ksh224.04, with kerosene also flat for the month.
Over the past year, transport has been the single biggest driver of the cost of living, up 15.6 per cent, with food close behind at 9.0 percent, a reminder that it’s the basics, more than anything else, that keep squeezing household budgets.
KNBS also pointed out that core inflation, which leaves out volatile items like food and energy, was a fairly tame 3.2 percent.
Non-core inflation was a different story altogether at 15.0 percent, which tells you most of the pain right now is coming from food and energy costs rather than the economy more broadly.
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