Zambia records a slowdown in Annual Inflation rate and a 4.5% Economic Growth rate in Quarter one of 2025

The Zambia Statistics Agency (ZamStats) reports that annual inflation for June 2025 slowed down to 14.1 percent from 15.3 percent recorded in May 2025. This was revealed during the Monthly Bulletin dissemination for June, 2025 presented by Acting Statistician General, Mrs. Sheila S. Mudenda.

The Acting Statistician General explained that the drop-in inflation was largely due to price changes in both food and non-food items. This means that on average, prices of goods and services increased by 14.1 percent between June 2024 and June 2025. Annual Food inflation dropped 16.7 percent from 17.9 percent recorded in May, 2025. This was mainly driven by price changes in cereals such as breakfast and roller mealie meal, maize grain, samp, and rice; vegetables like spinach, Chinese cabbage, dried beans, and sweet potatoes; fruits including oranges, apples, and pineapples; and cooking oil.

The pattern was the same for non-food inflation where a drop to 10.3 percent was recorded in June 2025 from 11.6 percent in May 2025. This was influenced by price movements in prices of non-food items such as purchase of motor vehicles, including Toyota Hilux and Nissan Hardbody, air passenger transport, fuels like diesel and petrol. At provincial level, Western Province recorded the highest annual inflation rate at 16.7 percent where as Eastern Province recorded the lowest at 10.7 percent.

Mrs. Mudenda also reported that Zambia’s economy grew by 4.5 percent in the first quarter of 2025, a notable increase from 2.2 percent recorded in the same quarter of 2024.representing a 2.3 percentage points increase

On the Trade front, Zambia recorded a surplus of K1.5 billion in May 2025 compared to the Surplus of K0.5 billion recorded in April 2025. Imports increased by 9.4 percent from K26.2 billion in April 2025 to K28.7 billion in May 2025. This was mainly as a result of increases in import bills of Consumer goods by 15.4 percent, Capital goods by 16.0 percent and Intermediate goods by 4.8 percent

Additionally, Cumulative volume of refined copper exports for the period January to May 2025 was 363.1 thousand metric tonnes while that of 2024 for the same period was 315.9 thousand metric tonnes representing a 14.9 percent increase.