The Central Bank of Nigeria has projected a gradual drop in inflation rate over the next six months.

This is contained in its newly released report on inflation expectations for February 2025.

According to the report, businesses and household respondents expect the level of inflation to gradually reduce over the next six months.

The respondents also anticipated lower spending as their expenditure gradually decreased over the next six months.

Further analysis by income distribution indicated that more households earning above N200,000 per month perceived inflation to be moderating, driven by factors such as energy costs, exchange rate, transportation costs, interest rate and insecurity influenced their perception of the inflation rate in the month under review.

The apex bank, however said 65.1 per cent of respondents want a reduction in interest rate by the financial institution.

This is as the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in its Consumer Price Index (CPI) report for March said the inflation rate for February dropped to 23.18% year-on-year in February 2025, reflecting a second consecutive monthly decline from the 24.48% recorded in January.

This figure marks a significant 8.52 percentage point decrease from the 31.70% seen in February 2024, following the adoption of a new CPI rebasing methodology.