National average cost of healthy diet rose by 19.2% to N1,241 in June- NBS

National average cost of healthy diet rose by 19.2% to N1,241 in June- NBS

Nike Popoola

The national average Cost of a Healthy Diet (CoHD) in Nigeria rose by 19.2% to N1,241 in June.

Data obtained by Dailyeconomy from the National Bureau of Statistics titled ‘Cost of Healthy Diet June 2024’ revealed on Wednesday.

According to the report, “The Cost of a Healthy Diet (CoHD) is the least expensive combination of locally available items that meets globally consistent food-based dietary guidelines. It is used as a measure of physical and economic access to healthy diets. This is a lower bound (or floor) of the cost per adult per day excluding the cost of transportation and meal preparation.

“The National average Cost of a Healthy Diet was N1,241 in June 2024. This is 19.2% higher than the amount recorded in the previous month (May 2024, was N1,041). In June 2024, the average CoHD was highest in the South West at N1,545 per adult per day, compared to N956 per adult per day in North West.

“In recent months, the CoHD has risen faster than general inflation and food inflation. However, the CoHD and the food CPI are not directly comparable; the CoHD includes fewer items and is measured in Naira per day, while the food CPI is a weighted index.”

The data said the retail food price data used in this analysis is collected by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) monthly from 10,534 informants spread across the country, from urban and rural outlets in each State and FCT.

NBS collects these prices routinely for monitoring inflation, including prices of over 200 retail food items. Nearly 150 of these food items are potentially included in a healthy diet and the price data for these items are used for the computation of the CoHD.

The NBS stated that, “In Nigeria, CoHD is the minimum cost of foods needed to meet international recommendations defined in the Healthy Diet Basket (HDB), a globally relevant set of criteria that captures similarities across most national food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG) (Table 1).

“The HDB was created as a comparable standard to calculate and com-pare the cost and affordability of healthy diets across countries; the HDB is most relevant for countries where there is not yet a quantified national FBDG, like Nigeria.”