THE DYNAMICS OF REGIONAL INFLATION RATES IN NIGERIA

The absence of price control in Nigerian and the attitude of retailers have resulted in the inflation rates not showing any specific pattern. Consumers have relied on day to day price fixation by retailers who may at any point in time decide what price items are sold in the market. This has in turn caused differences in inflation rates in the regions of the country. The national government pays little or no attention since its main interest is concentrated on the national inflation rate. National Bureau of Statistics through its prices division collects prices data which is used to produce state price indices. In a bid to investigate the reasons for the fluctuations in the inflation rates, the state index series available at the National Bureau of Statistics are used to compute state inflation rates for all the states. The already existing regional structure of the country was used to compute average inflation rates of states under each region which was used to generate a multiple regression model of inflation rates for the regions which revealed that North West and South east have minimum contributions to the rising inflation rates in Nigeria. Notwithstanding the above result, the study was able to discover that the North dominate in contributing to the rise in inflation rates in Nigeria. Hypothesis tested using Analysis of variance however concluded that there is no significant difference in the means of inflation rates of the regions during the period under study.