One of East Africa’s flagship economies, Uganda, is presently experiencing troubling storms as headline inflation rose to 5.4 percent year-on-year in July, 2015.

This is up from the former rate of 4.9 percent in June and analysts are attributing the disturbing development to a recent spike in housing and energy costs, a point that was confirmed today by the nation’s centralstatistics office.

It will be recalled that in anticipation of this upsurge, policymakers, who had been concerned about the inflationary pressures in the country after the shilling weakened sharply against the dollar, had raised the benchmark lending rate by 150 basis points earlier this month.

Core inflation, which excludes food, metered water and fuel prices, also rose to 5.4 percent from 4.9 percent in June, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics said.

On a monthly basis, the headline inflation rose by 0.4 percent from a decline of 0.9 percent in June.

Electricity, fuel and utilities inflation went up by 4.5 percent from a rise of 0.2 percent in June.

“Increase in prices was recorded for clothing, footwear, rent charges, cement, charcoal, firewood, petrol, diesel and kerosene,” the bureau said.

Food inflation fell during the month mainly due to a decline in the prices of vegetables and fruits.