Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim,Government Statistician
BETWEEN January 2019 and January 2020, producer price inflation (PPI) has increased by 13.3 per cent, Professor Samuel Annim Kobina, Government Statistician, has noted.
Prof Annim, who made this known to journalists on Wednesday in Accra, said this rate represented a 0.3 percentage point increase in producer inflation, relative to the rate of 13 per cent recorded in December 2019, while the month-on-month change between December and January 2020 was 0.5 per cent.
He said the mining and quarrying sub-sector recorded the highest year-on-year producer price inflation rate of 32.2 per cent, followed by the utilities sub-sector with 12.6 per cent. The manufacturing sub-sector recorded the lowest year-on-year producer inflation rate of 9.6 per cent.
Giving more details on the report, he said the mining and quarrying sector decreased by 1.5% over the December 2019 rate of 33.7% which recorded 32.2% in January 2020, while the manufacturing sector which constituted more than two-thirds of the total industry increased by 0.8% to record 9.6%.
Prof. Kobina added that the Utility sub-sector recorded an inflation rate of 12.6% for January 2020, which indicated a marginal decrease by 0.8% over the December 2019 rate of 12.7.
In January 2019, the PPI rate for all industry was 3.4 per cent. Thereafter, he said it resumed an upward trend to record 7.1 per cent in April 2019 but declined to 6.7 per cent in May 2019. Since then, it increased consistently to record 10.2 per cent in August 2019 but declined to 8.9 per cent in October 2019. The rate then increased again to record 13.3 per cent in January this year.
In January 2020, he said five out of the 16 major groups in the manufacturing sub-sector recorded inflation rated higher than the sector average of 9.6 per cent. Manufacture of machinery and equipment recorded the highest inflation rate of 24.7 per cent while manufacture of wood and products of wood and cork recorded the least inflation of 0.8 per cent.
For the petroleum sub-sector, the producer price inflation was 3.8 per cent in January 2019, after which it increased to record 17.2 per cent in April 2019, but declined to 1.2 per cent in June 2019. However, it increased to 3.1 per cent in August 2019, but declined again to -5.7 per cent in October 2019. Thereafter the rate increased consistently to 13 per cent in January this year.
By Mary Asieduwaa