The national year-on-year inflation rate was 10.1% in October 2020, which is 0.3 percentage points lower than last month, according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released by Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) on 11th November 2020.
Month-on-month inflation between September 2020 and October 2020 was 0.2 percent. This contrasts with the negative month-on-month inflation that was observed in the previous two months (-0.4 in August and -0.2 in September).
However, the GSS stated that the 0.2 percent is still less than observed in either pre-COVID or in the months since COVID-19.
According to GSS, on average, month-on-month inflation between April to July 2020 was 0.9 percent and in the six months before the COVID-19, the month-on-month inflation rate was 0.7 percent.
Food and Non-Food Inflation
Again, just two of the thirteen Divisions had higher than average inflation rates; Housing, Water, Electricity, and Gas (20.2%) and Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages (12.6%).
The Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages Division recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 12.6%. This is a 1.4 percentage point higher than the 11.2 percent recorded in August 2020.
This higher inflation rate for food translates into food having a higher contribution to overall inflation. Food contributed 54.7 percent to the total inflation and thus is still the predominant driver of year-on-year inflation.
Within the Food Division, Vegetables was the Subclass with the highest rate of inflation of 24.9 percent. The GSS attributed the high inflation for vegetables to the relatively low index for vegetables back in October 2019.
The GSS stated that compared to both September and November 2019, inflation for vegetables would be closer to the numbers reported in the last months of around 17 percent.
Consonant previous months, month-on-month inflation for vegetables was negative (- 1.6%) and the overall month-on-month Food inflation was 0.1 percent.
In contrast to Food inflation, Non-Food inflation decreased year-on-year to 8.3 percent, this is the lowest rate since April 2020. Month-on-month Non-Food inflation was 0.3 percent.
Three Divisions had higher month-on-month inflation between September and October 2020 than on average was recorded for these Divisions in the months before the COVID-19 pandemic. The other ten Divisions showed lower than average rates of month-on-month inflation.
Regional Inflation
Regional analyses revealed that the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 1.6 percent in the Upper West Region to 15.2 percent in Greater Accra. In Greater Accra, the difference between Food (14.0%) and Non-Food inflation (16.0%) was just 2 percentage points, while in Ashanti Region this difference was 13 percentage points (17.6% compared to 4.6%).
On a month-on-month basis, Northern Region recorded the highest inflation of 1.1 percent and the lowest of -2.4 percent in Upper West.
On average, rural areas showed higher month-on-month inflation of 0.3 percent but lower year-on-year inflation of 8.8 percent than urban areas with a 0.2 percent month-on-month and 10.5 percent year-on-year.
Imported and Local Inflation
According to the report, the inflation of imported goods was 5.1 percent, while the inflation of local goods was 12.2 percent on average. The month-on-month inflation for imported goods was 0.8 percent, while the month-on-month inflation for local goods was 0.1 percent.
Splitting locally produced items between Food and Non-Food items, Food items had an average year-on-year inflation of 13.6 percent and Non-Food items an inflation rate of 9.6 percent. Month-on-month inflation for locally produced Food Items remained unchanged, compared to 0.2 percent for locally produced Non-Food Items.
Imported Food items had a month-on-month inflation rate of 1.9 percent, while Non-food imported items had an inflation rate of 0.3 percent.
