UBOS: Increased school fees soar annual inflation rate

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), monthly inflation report, has revealed that the increase in the country’s annual inflation rate for the year ending February 2024, has mainly been caused by the hike in education services, especially school fees.

The report indicated that the country’s annual inflation rate for the year ending February 2024, has risen to 3.4 percent up from the 2.8 percent that was recorded the year ending January 2024.

While releasing the monthly update at the bureau headquarters in Kampala, Alizik K Lubega, the UBOS Director for Economic Statistics, highlighted that the education services aggregation takes into account all the aspects relating to education, be it the tuition, school requirements, food, and everything that goes into education. She added that as the school year began there was a higher increase in the tuition, compared to last year and this influenced the prices across the entire education systems docket.

The UBOS report has come at a time when the school fees structure for institutions is regarded as exorbitant and has been a matter of public concern. Available information shows that Uganda’s upscale schools require an average of between 1.4 million and 3.3 million shillings, which is way too high for an average Ugandan parent.

According to the report, education services fall under the core inflation aggregation category, whose weight heavily contributes to inflationary changes. In the year ending February 2024, the core inflation was registered at 5.4 percent, an increase from the  3.9 percent for the year ending January 2024. Specifically, the education services inflation, increased to 14.5 percent in February, up from 6.1 percent recorded in  January.

The other increments were recorded in the restaurants and accommodation services sector which rose to 6.0 percent from 4.9 percent, then the annual transport services sector was registered at 2.5 percent against the 1.8 percent of January.

From the report, the increments were also not observed in the annual other goods inflation, which was indicated at 1.5 percent up from 1.3 percent, and this was mainly due to the beef inflation which was recorded at 9.1 percent, away from 3.0 percent for last month. Maize flour increased to minus 19.2 percent from 31.1 percent.

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