The national year-on-year inflation rate in Ghana has dropped for the third consecutive time falling to 10.1 percent in the month of October.

The inflation rate for October is therefore 0.3 percentage point lower than the inflation rate for the month of September.

The decrease was influenced by the lower inflation levels of some non-food items in the country.

Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim while giving a breakdown indicated that the country is now 0.2 percentage point from achieving its single-digit inflation target for 2020.

“We recorded a rate of inflation for the month of September at 10.4 percent and now we are reporting a rate of 10.1 percent, which means that prices relatively have gone up but the rate at which it has gone up has reduced by 0.3 percent. This indicates that we are 0.2 percentage point away from the two digits that we aspire to reach as a country. For the first time in the last two months, we see that food contribution to year-on-year inflation has risen beyond 50 percent, specifically at 54.7 percent.”

Regional Inflation

Prof. Annim explained that, “Both food and non-food inflation culminates in the overall inflation, where Greater Accra Region recorded the highest inflation of 15.2 percent, and again the Upper West Region recorded the overall least inflation with 1.6 percent. This is showing us the stark variation across the different regions.”

In the Greater Accra, the difference between food (14.0 percent) and non-food inflation (16.0 percent) was just two percentage points, while in Ashanti Region this difference was 13 percentage points (17.6 percent compared to 4.6 percent).

On a month-on-month basis, Northern Region recorded the highest inflation (1.1 percent) and Upper West the lowest (-2.4 percent).

On average, rural areas showed a higher month-on-month (0.3 percent) but lower year-on-year inflation (8.8 percent) than urban areas (0.2 percent month-on-month and 10.5 percent year-on-year).

Food and non-food inflation

The food and non-alcoholic beverages division recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 12.6 percent. This is 1.4 percentage point higher than in August 2020 (11.2 percent).

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 (24.9 percent) was the subclass with the highest rates of inflation.

This high inflation for vegetables is explained by the relatively low index for vegetables back in October 2019.

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 percent).

Overall month-on-month food inflation was 0.1 percent.

In contrast to food inflation, non-food inflation decreased. Year-on-year non-food inflation came in at 8.3 percent. This is the lowest rate since April 2020. Month-on-month non-food inflation was 0.3 percent.

Imported and local inflation

The inflation of imported goods was 5.1 percent, while the inflation of local goods was 12.2 percent on average.

Month-on-month inflation for imported goods was 0.8 percent, while 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 saw an inflation rate of 9.6 percent.

Month-on-month inflation for locally produced food items was 0.0  percent, 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.

Source: citibusinessnews.com