General Price levels have gone up by 11.4 percent – Prof. Annim

The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has indicated that, inflation rate for the month of July rose to 11.4 percent from 11. 2 percent in June.

Government statistician, Professor John Kobina Annim explained at a press conference that increasing food prices contributes to a major driver of this phenomenon.

“We observed that from the perspective of year on year inflation, combining both food and non-food inflation, we see that housing, transport, food and non-alcoholic beverages dominates the high inflation of 16.2 percent that we record for Greater Accra Region for year on year inflation.

Prof. Annim

“So specifically, housing, water, electricity and gas, has an inflation rate of 40.0 percent, which is distantly followed by transport, 14.7 percent and closely followed by food and non-alcoholic beverages 13.8 percent”.

At the regional level, the Greater Accra recorded the highest year-on-year inflation of 16.2%, whilst the Volta Region recorded 4.2%

 “In the context of food inflation and on the backdrop that we have Ashanti Region and western  Region recording higher food inflation relative to Greater Accra Region. We observed that, vegetables, fish and other seafood and tea dominate the inflation rate of 13.8 percent that we record for year on year inflation for Greater Accra Region”.

“Specifically, vegetable records an inflation figure of 24.2 percent, followed by 16.0 percent for fish and other seafood and closely followed by tea with an inflation figure of 14. 6 percent”.

Prof. Annim noted that, between July 2019 and July 2020, on the average, general price levels have gone up by 11.4 percent, highlighting the July 2020 rate of inflation and CPI.

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“CPI for the month of July 2020 stood at 120.5 relative to 119.8 for CPI that was recorded FOR the month of June 2020.This translates into A year on year, that is July 2019 as the base year relative to July 2020 year on year inflation of 11.4 percent. Which literally means that, between July 2019 and July 2020 on the average general price levels have gone up by 11.4 percent”.

“On a month on month basis, that is comparing June 2020 with July 2020, inflation was 0.5 percent. This is the lowest inflation, month on month inflation that we’ve recorded during the Covid phase”.

Annual Inflation rate rises to 11.3 percent in May

On June 10, 2020 Prof. Annim disclosed that, the year-on-year inflation rate increased to 11.3 percent in May up from 10.6 percent in April on food prices.

According to him, the rate rose by 0.7 percentage points from the 10.6 percent recorded in April.

The Food and non-alcoholic beverages division recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 15.1 percent, up 0.7 percentage points over the 14.4 percent recorded in April. Food contributed nearly 60 percent of the year-on-year inflation in April 2020.

“This translates to food being the predominant driver of year-on-year inflation,” Prof. Annim said.

The average non-food inflation stood at 8.4 percent.

At the regional level, the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 3.1 percent in the Upper East Region to 13.3 percent in Greater Accra.

The inflation of imported goods was 4.8 percent, while the inflation of local goods was 14.1 percent on average, the highest rate of local inflation, and the lowest rate of imported goods inflation since the rebasing in August 2019.