Ghana: December 2019, Inflation Falls to 7.9%

BY ANIN AGYEI-

NEW AFRICA DAILY NEWS, Accra, GHANA- CONSUMER Price Index (CPI), which measures the change over time in the general price level of goods and services that households acquire for the purposes of consumption, in the month of December 2019 went down to 7.9%.

Briefing the press in Accra, Government Statistician of the Ghana Statistical Service, Professor Samuel K Annim, said the year-on-year inflation rate as measured by CPI dropped to 0.3 percentage point from the 8.2% recorded in November 2019.

For the food and non-alcoholic beverages group, the Statistician pointed out that the year -on -year inflation rate recorded 7.2%, which is 1.2 percentage points lower than the 8.4% recorded in November 2019.

“Between November 2019 and December 2019 the price level of Food and Non-alcoholic beverages went down slightly by -0.6%. This fall is predominately driven by a decrease in price levels of vegetables and fish,” he explained.

For the non-food group, Prof Annim said it recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 8.5% in December 2019, compared to 8.0% recorded in November 2019.

Prof. Annim said “non-food classes with the highest year-on-year inflation include other transport services of 34.5%, postal and courier services 31.5%, narcotics 28.1% and garden products 24.7%. Maintenance and repair of personal transport equipment -10.6%, education not defined by level -8.1%, car -2.3%, sound equipment -2.3%, electric appliances for personal care -2.2% had negative year-on-year inflation rates.”

He pointed out that at the regional level, the year-on-year inflation ranged from 5.0% in Ashanti region to 12.0% in the Greater Accra Region.

Prof. Annim also said inflation of imported goods was 6.1%, while the inflation of local goods was 8.7% on average.

“This is the highest rate of local inflation and the lowest rate of inflation for imported goods since August 2019. Month –on-month inflation for imported goods was -0.2%, which month –on-month inflation for local goods was 5%,” he explained.

BY ANIN AGYEI, NEW AFRICA DAILY NEWS, AFRICA CORRESPONDENT

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