JUBA (Reuters) - South Sudan's inflation rate raced up to 835.7 percent in the year to October from 682.1 percent in September, driven up by rising food and non-alcoholic drinks prices as the economy of the five-year-old nation continues to reel from conflict.
Prices for food and non-alcoholic drinks soared 1,002.2 percent in the period, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement. Inflation had stood at 95.7 percent in the year to October 2015.
Oil-producing South Sudan secured independence from Sudan in 2011 but in December 2013 slid into civil war after a dispute between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar.
A peace deal signed in 2015 has failed to stick and sporadic fighting between rival soldiers has continued, leaving many of the nation's 11 million struggling to find enough to eat.
(Reporting by Denis Dumo; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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