The national year-on-year inflation rate has gone up marginally to 7.8% in June 2021, a 0.3 percentage point higher than the 7.5% recorded in May 2021. The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) attributed the rise to increase food prices and transport fares.
“June 2021 inflation was 7.8%. The return to an upwards inflationary trend this month is mainly driven by increases in the contribution of Food and Transport to overall inflation”.
Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, Government Statistician
Meanwhile month-on-month inflation between May and June 2021 was 1.3%, a 0.5 percentage point higher than what was recorded in May. Even though the inflation rate for the sub-category of ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas’ went down to 14.2% in June from 19.9% in May, it was still the sub-class with the highest inflation at the end of the first half of the year.
Regional Inflation
At the regional level, Greater Accra Region still maintains its dominance as the region with the highest annual rate of inflation. According to the GSS, the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 1.1% in Western Region to 12.5% in Greater Accra Region.
On the other hand, Upper West Region recorded the highest month-on-month inflation of 4.4% in the month of June. Three regions saw a stark decline in Food inflation in June as compared to May. Inflation declined in the Western Region from 0.4% to -1.1%, from 9.8% to 8.0% in the Volta region, and from 7.8% to 6.0% in the Upper East region.
Food Inflation
In June 2021, Food inflation rose to 7.3% from the 5.4% recorded in May but lower than the average of 10.8% for the previous 12 months. As a result, Food contribution to inflation increased from 32.3% to 41.8%.
Overall month-on-month Food inflation was 1.8%, which is above the average month-on-month inflation. Nevertheless, within the food sub-divisions, only Fish and other Seafood recorded a negative month-on-month Food inflation.
Non-Food Inflation
On the other hand, Ten Non-Food Divisions recorded positive month-on-month inflation with a maximum of 3.1%. Unlike Food inflation, Non-Food year-on-year inflation on average went down in June compared to May, from 9.2% to 8.2%.
Out of the 13 Divisions, ten had lower or equal year-on-year inflation in June 2021 than the rolling average over the last 12 months. Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and other fuels is the Non-Food Division that recorded the biggest difference of 21.1% compared to the 12-month average of 11.2%. Moreover, Transport recorded a relatively high inflation of 13.4% in June compared to the rolling average of 8.2%.
In five regions, month-on-month Transport Inflation was above 1%, with Upper West Region recording the highest overall month-on-month inflation of 4.4% whilst the Western and Central Regions recorded the lowest rates of 0.1%.
Imported and Local Inflation
Furthermore, inflation for imported goods declined to 7.0% in June down from 7.3% recorded in May. Conversely, inflation for locally produced items was also 7.9% on average, up from the 7.3% recorded the previous month. Meanwhile, on a month-on-month basis, inflation for imported goods was 0.4% whilst that of locally produced goods was 1.6%.
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