Baah Wadieh, Acting Government Statistician
The Producer Price Inflation (PPI) rate for May 2018 recorded 7.1 percent.
Acting Government Statistician, Baah Wadieh who disclosed this to the media Wednesday in Accra said the rate represented 0.7 percentage point increase in producer inflation relative to the rate recorded in April 2018 which was 6.4 percent.
He said the figures for the month of May 2018 were provisional and subject to review when additional data become available.
The PPI measures the average change over time in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services.
Mining and Quarrying
The ex-factory price rates in the Mining and Quarrying sub-sector, Mr. Wadieh said, decreased by 1.4 percentage points over the April 2018 rate of 10.3 percent to record 8.9 percent in May 2018.
According to him, the producer inflation for manufacturing, which constituted more than two-thirds of total industry, increased by 1.4 percentage points to record 8.6 percent.
He revealed that the utilities sub-sector recorded inflation of -0.4 percent in May 2018 indicating a decrease of 0.1 percentage point relative to the rate recorded in April 2018 (-0.3%).
He noted that the producer inflation rate in the petroleum subsector was -4.5 percent in May 2017.
In May 2017, the producer price inflation rate for all industry was 3.7 percent, which declined consistently to record 2.0 percent in July 2017.
Subsequently, it reportedly increased consistently to record 8.3 percent in October 2017, but declined to 7.1 percent in November 2017.
In December 2017, the rate increased to 8.7 percent but decreased consistently to record 3.7 percent in March 2018, said Mr. Wadieh.
He added that it increased to 6.4 percent in April 2018 and 7.1 percent in May 2018.
According to Mr. Wadieh, the Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the first quarter of 2018 grew by 6.8 percent (year-on-year) compared to 6.7 percent recorded in the first quarter of 2017.
The industry sector recorded the highest growth of 9.6 percent.
The service sector followed with 5.2 percent and agriculture with 2.8 percent.
By Melvin Tarlue & Ruth Ofori