Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim
Inflation for November has gone up marginally to 23% from the October figure of 22.1%.
The adjustment was influenced by rising prices of some food stuff on the market over the past month.
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) released the data at a news conference in Accra yesterday December 4, 2024.
Food inflation for November 2024 went up to 25.9% compared to 28.8% in October 2024.
Equally, non-food inflation went down to 20.7% in November compared to 21.5% in October 2024.
In addition, inflation for locally produced items went up to 25.4% in November 2024 compared to 24.6% in October 2024 while inflation for imported items went up in November to 17.6% compared to 16.3% in October 2024.
The Government Statistician Prof. Kobina Annim, stated that on a year-on-year basis, Ghana’s food inflation was 25.9% relative to the 23.0 % to the overall rate of inflation.
According to him, the Upper East region experienced the highest inflation rate, reaching 44.9% which is significantly higher than the national inflation rate of 23.0% for the month of November 2024.
Eastern Region on the other hand experienced the lowest inflation rate of 18.7%, also for the month of November. When disaggregated from a food and non food perspective, Savanna Region had the highest food inflation, with 46.0% in the month of November 2024.
Also in the third quarter of 2024, the total trade value was GH¢145.7 billion, comprising GH¢74.8 billion in exports and GH¢70.9 billion in imports, trade surplus was recorded for the third consecutive quarter, though the value declined significantly from GH¢6.1 billion in the second quarter of 2024 to GH¢3.9 billion in third quarter.
The dominance of gold as the main export commodity has been further consolidated with an increase in its share of about 19.5 percentage points (from 42.5% to 62.1%) between Q3 2023 and Q3 2024.
By Vera Owusu Sarpong & Ransford Wletsu