The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) announced on Wednesday that the year-on-year inflation in the West African country has dropped to 25% in April, which is 0.8 percentage points lower than the 25.8% recorded in the previous month. This indicates that the rate of inflation for April in the country slowed by 0.8%.
According to Ghana News Agency, Professor Samuel Anim, the Government statistician at GSS explained the reason behind the numbers pinpointing sectors of the Ghanaian economy that contributed to the slower rate of inflation in the country.
“The slower rate of inflation in April was due to a decline in food inflation during the month under review,” Anim said
“We saw a contrast between food and non-food while we saw a decrease in food inflation from 29.6 percent to 26.8 percent in April 2024 a reverse was the case for non-food inflation as it increased to 23.5 percent from 22.6 percent in March 2024”. Anim added
According to Prof Anim, food inflation was responsible for the overall drop in the rate of inflation as it recorded a rate of 26.8% from 29.6% the lowest it has been in 13 months.
On the other hand, Non-Food inflation shot up to 23.5% in April 2024, from 22.6% in March 2024.
This inherently means that compared to March, food inflation declined by 2.8 percentage points to 26.8 percent in April, while non-food inflation increased by 0.9 percentage points to 23.5 percent in April according to data from the GSS.
Inflation for locally produced items in the country stood at 25.7% while that of imported items into the country stood at 23.5%
Furthermore, Seven Ghanian economic divisions recorded higher inflation rates than the national average. These divisions range from the food sector, Hospitability sector, Health sector, and other diverse sectors.
These sectors include Alcoholic Beverages, Tobacco, and Narcotics (39.3%); Restaurants and Accommodation Services (33.9%), Personal Care, Social Protection, and Miscellaneous Goods and Services (31.9%); Health (31.2%); Recreation, Sports and Culture (28.7%).
For Food inflation in the country, 10 out of the 15 sub-class registered inflation that exceeded the overall food inflation of 26.8%.
They included Cocoa Drinks (63.4%); Tea and Related Products (59.3%); Vegetables, Tubers, Plantain, Cooking, Banana, and Pulses (39.5%), and Coffee and Coffee Substitutes (35.5%).
In terms of regional inflation in the country, the Upper East region recorded the highest inflation rate of 42.5% while the Western North region and Oti region recorded the lowest at 16.8%
What to know
- In recent times, Ghana has been going through what has been described by experts as its worst economic crisis in a generation characterized by high inflation and unemployment
- Nairametrics earlier reported that Ghana defaulted on most of its external debt in December 2022 and in January 2024 it reached a deal in principle to restructure $5.4 billion of loans with official creditors, including China and France.
