Prof Samuel Annim, Gov’t Statistician
THE YEAR-on-year inflation rate for April this year was 10.6%, 2.8 percentage points higher than last month.
Month-on-month inflation between March 2020 and April 2020 was 3.2%.
These are highest recorded year-on-year and month-on-month inflation rates since the CPI rebasing in August of last year.
Only two of the 13 divisions had higher than average inflation rates—Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages (14.4%) and Housing, Water, Electricity and Gas (11.2%).
The Food and Non-alcoholic Beverages Division recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 14.4%.
This is six percentage points higher than March 2020 (8.4%) and 6.5 percentage points higher than the average food inflation rate recorded in the previous eight months (7.9%).
This translates to food being the predominant driver of year-on-year inflation. Food contributed 59.6% of the year-on-year inflation in April 2020. In the previous eight months this contribution was on average, 44.1%.
Month-on-month food inflation stood at 6.4%, meaning that Between March 2020 and April 2020 the average price level of food and non-alcoholic beverages increased by 6.4%. Food is also the predominant driver of month-on-month inflation.
Within the Food Division, vegetables (+37%) and fruits & nuts (+ 20.5%) were the subclasses with the highest rates of inflation for both year-on-year and month-on-month inflation. Within the Housing, Water, Electricity, and Gas Division (+11.2%), the subclasses, ‘Solid Fuels (16.7%)’ and ‘Materials for the Maintenance and Repair of Dwelling (13.1%)’ recorded the highest inflation rates.
At the regional level, the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 2.3% in the Upper East Region to 15.1% in Greater Accra. When comparing food to non-food inflation, there are clear differences between regions. Greater Accra (20.8%) and Ashanti (18.2%) had the highest rates of food inflation, while Eastern Region saw the highest non-food inflation (12.5%). Upper East, Northern, Eastern, and Central regions experienced higher non-food than food inflation, the opposite was true for the other six regions.
Inflation of imported goods was 4.9%, while the inflation of local goods was 13.1% on average. This is the highest rate of local inflation and the lowest rate of imported goods inflation since the rebasing in August 2019.
Month-on-month inflation for imported goods was 0%, while month-on-month inflation for local goods was 4.5%.
The main contributor to local inflation was the inflation of locally produced foods.
BY Samuel Boadi