Kenya National Bureau of Statistics is pleased to release the Consumer Price Indices (CPI) and inflation rates for the month of November 2008, for your information and use. This data is generated through monthly data collection from retail outlets in 13 urban centers in Kenya and is perceived to represent the spending behaviour of Kenyan urban households. The prices are collected in the second and third weeks of the month of review in the selected retail outlets. This is in order to maintain consistency in the price variations.

The CPI increased by 2.2 per cent from 295.38 points in October 2008 to 301.79 points in November 2008.  Month-on-month overall inflation rate increased from 28.4 percent in October 2008 to 29.4 per cent in November 2008.  On the other hand, month-on-month underlying inflation rate which excludes food items from the CPI basket decreased from 13.0 percent in October 2008 to 12.3 per cent in November 2008.

Table 1 shows Weights and the percentage changes to the indices of broad categories of items in the month of November 2008 compared to October 2008 (previous month) and the month of November 2008 compared to November 2007 (previous year).

Table 1: One Month and twelve months Change in Price Indices
Broad Item Group	% Weights	% Change on Previous month (Nov 08/Oct 08 )	% Change on Previous year (Nov 08/Nov 07)
Food & Non-alcoholic drink	50.50	3.1	39.4
Alcohol & Tobacco	2.97	-0.4	15.1
Clothing & Footwear	9.00	0.5	6.0
Housing Costs	11.74	0.9	7.4
Fuel & Power	4.18	-0.7	26.9
Household Goods & Services	5.82	0.9	12.7
Medical Goods and Services	1.59	0.6	14.6
Transport & Communication	5.75	- 0.3	13.4
Recreation & Education	6.02	0.2	7.1
Personal Goods	2.45	1.0	10.3
Average all Groups	100.00	2.2	29.4

Food and non alcoholic drinks index, increased by 3.1 percent from 392.81 in October 2008 to 405.03 in November 2008 mainly due to increase in the prices of maize flour, tomatoes and maize grain among other food items. The average price of two Kilograms of maize flour for instance, increased by 11.4 percent from KSh.81.75 in October to KSh. 91.05 in November 2008.  Prices of tomatoes and loose maize grains, similarly increased by 13.8 and 4.1 percents, respectively.