Eswatini inflation rate (CPI)

What this value means

REFERENCE MONTH APRIL 2026. SOURCE CAVEAT — READ THIS: the compiler of the CPI is the Central Statistical Office, not the Central Bank, but the CSO's April, May and June 2026 CPI reports could not be retrieved from any host at confirmation (see ACCESS below), so the April figure is served on the authority of the CBE's own Monetary Policy Statement, which quotes the CSO number. That means no index level, no month-on-month and no group detail are available for April 2026 — only the headline 2.0%. The last CSO report actually read is March 2026 (index 123.51, y/y 1.6%, m/m -0.1%), which is the first history entry below. If a watcher can reach the CSO April/May/June bulletins, replace this entry with the CSO figures. TURNING POINT: 2.0% in April 2026 ends a long disinflation — headline fell every month from 4.1% in January 2025 to a cycle low of 1.6% in March 2026, the lowest reading in the published series since at least 2016. The rebound is an energy shock: liquid fuels swung from -5.5% to +23.3% y/y between March and April 2026 on Middle East tensions, and the CBE responded by raising its 2026 inflation forecast to 3.31% and its 2027 forecast to 3.74%. BASKET: twelve COICOP divisions, weights from the 2016/17 HIES — housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels 27.69%; food and non-alcoholic beverages 20.15%; transport 17.53%; communication 7.36%; education 6.57%; clothing and footwear 5.57%; alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics 5.02%; furnishings and household equipment 4.73%; miscellaneous goods and services 2.14%; recreation and culture 1.78%; health 1.27%; restaurants and hotels 0.19%. Prices are collected in the first three weeks of each month at selected outlets across the four regions. In March 2026 housing and utilities contributed 1.1pp of the 1.6% headline, clothing and footwear 0.3pp and alcohol/tobacco 0.2pp, while transport subtracted 0.1pp. NO INFLATION TARGET: Eswatini does not publish an inflation target — the CBE's mandate is price and financial stability subject to the 1:1 Rand peg, so do not describe any figure as 'within target'. Note that South Africa adopted a new 3% target with a 1pp tolerance band in November 2025, which will pull on Eswatini through the peg but is not Eswatini's target. ANNUAL AVERAGES from the CSO series: 2025 3.1%, 2024 4.0%, 2023 5.0%, 2022 4.8%. ACCESS: the CSO publishes each report as a text-extractable PDF at https://www.gov.sz/images/planningministry/ESWATINI%20INFLATION%20REPORT_<MONTH>%20<YEAR>.pdf, but the filename convention is unstable (February 2026 carries a timestamp suffix, '..._FEBRUARY%202026_20260318_153145.pdf') so URLs cannot be reliably guessed, and guesses for APRIL and JUNE 2026 returned HTTP 404. There is no index page: the CSO's own page on gov.sz (index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=687) is catastrophically stale — it still says 'The most current report for this survey is August 2010' — and search engines index the series only to March 2026. The March 2026 report gives forward release dates of 15 May, 15 June and 15 July 2026, so the June 2026 report should exist as at this confirmation date but is not discoverable. Contact on the reports: Mr Bongumenzi Zwane, CSO, +268 2404 2152/3 ext 121.

Earlier values

Get it programmatically

curl https://afriref.dev/v1/sz/cpi
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://afriref.dev/v1/sz/cpi/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/sz/cpi

Other Eswatini series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · corporate tax rate · income tax rates