The national year-on-year inflation rate was 9.8% in November 2020, which is 0.3 percentage points lower than last month, according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) on 9th December 2020.
Professor Samuel Annim, the Government Statistician, who announced the rate, said the drop was the fourth consecutive monthly decline post-COVID-19.
Month-on-month inflation between October 2020 and November 2020 was 0.3 percent. This is consistent with the positive month-on-month inflation that was observed in the previous month (0.2 % in October).
However, the GSS stated that the 0.3 percent is still less than observed in either pre-COVID or 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
Food contributed 53.0% to the total inflation and thus is still the predominant driver of year-on-year inflation. Within the food Division, fruits and nuts (21.7%) were the Subclasses with the highest rates of inflation followed by vegetables (19.5%).
Food inflation however dropped marginally between October and November. In October, food contributed 54.7 percent to the total inflation and was as usual the predominant driver of year-on-year inflation.
Even though Vegetable inflation is still higher than average Food inflation and overall inflation, it was 5.4 percentage points lower this month compared to last month (24.9%).
Overall month-on-month Food inflation was 0.3%, with negative (- 1.6%) inflation for the Fruits and Nuts Subclass. In contrast to Food inflation, Non-Food inflation did not change compared to last month.
Year-on-year inflation (%)
Source : Ghana statistical service
In contrast to Food inflation, Non-Food inflation was stable year-on-year at 8.3 percent, this is the lowest rate since April 2020. Month-on-month Non-Food inflation was also stable at 0.3 percent. The ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, and Gas’ Division contributed 22.6% to the total inflation.
This shows that non-food inflation remained unchanged between October and November 2020.
This is the highest contribution of this Division since the rebasing in August 2019. Most of this increase can be attributed to increased rents and refuse disposal. Month-on-month inflation for the ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, and Gas’ Division was 0.9%, making it the only Division that recorded month-month inflation higher than recorded on average between either September 2019 to March 2020 and April to October 2020.
This 0.9% is higher than all other Divisions and higher than on average between September 2019 and March 2020 (0.7%), but lower than the average in the months after COVID-19. From April to October 2020, Housing, Water, Electricity, and Gas Division month-on-month inflation was on average 1.1%.
Regional Inflation
Regional analyses revealed that the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 3.4% in the Upper West and Volta Regions to 15.2% in Greater Accra. Greater Accra is the only Region that recorded a food inflation rate of over 8 percent (13.7%).
In Greater Accra, the difference between Food (13.7%) and Non-Food (16.2%) inflation was just 2.5 percentage points. This is however higher than the 2.0% recorded last month.
In the Ashanti Region, this difference was 9.4 percentage points (5.7% compared to 15.1%). Upper West Region was the only region where Non-Food inflation was higher than Food inflation.
On a month-on-month basis, Upper West Region recorded the highest inflation (2.3%) and the Central Region the lowest (-0.7%). Furthermore, Upper West Region also recorded the highest month-on-month Food inflation (3.9%).
This is in sharp contrast to last month when Northern Region recorded the highest inflation of 1.1% and the lowest of -2.4% in Upper West on a month-on-month basis
Imported and Local Inflation
According to the report, the inflation of imported goods was 5.6%, while the inflation of local goods was 11.5% on average. Month-on-month inflation for both imported goods and local goods was 0.4%.
This means that inflation of imported goods went up marginally in November from 5.1 percent recorded in October. Inflation of local goods however saw a decline from an average of 12.2 percent recorded in October.
Professor Samuel Annim, said “the main contributor to local month-on-month inflation was the reduction of prices of locally produced food items”.
Splitting locally produced items between Food and Non-Food items, Food items had an average year-on-year inflation of 12.0% and Non-Food items with an inflation rate of 9.2%.
Month-on-month inflation for locally produced Food Items was 0.3%, compared to 0.4% for locally produced Non-Food Items.
Conversely, imported Food items had a month-on-month inflation rate of 0.8%, while Non-food imported items had an inflation rate of 0.3%.
