Kenya's inflation dips in July, helped by falling food prices

NAIROBI - Kenyan inflation fell to 7.3% year-on-year in July from 7.9% a month earlier, largely due to falling food prices, the East African country's statistics office said.

Inflation was 0.1% on a monthly basis compared with 0.8% in June, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement on Monday.

The statistics office said the food and non-alcoholic beverages index fell by 0.5% in July from a month earlier. The index has a 32.91% weighting in calculating Kenyan inflation.

Kenya's government has a preferred inflation band of 2.5%-7.5% in the medium term.

In late June, the central bank raised its benchmark lending rate to 10.5%, from 9.5% previously, citing sustained inflationary pressure.

(Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Alexander Smith)