Inflation rate for April rises to 10.6%

The national year-on-year inflation rate for April 2020 hits 10.6%, which is 2.8 percentage points higher than last month, the Ghana Statistical Service has said.

The year-on-year inflation for March 2020 was at 7.8 percent. The Month-on-month inflation between March 2020 and April 2020 was 3.2%.

These are the highest recorded year-on-year and month-on-month inflation rates since the CPI rebasing in August 2019.

Inflation rates for Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages was at 14.4% and Housing, Water, Electricity, and Gas at 11.2%.

Food and Non-food Inflation

The Food and Non-alcoholic Beverages Division recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 14.4%. This is 6 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.

Regional Inflation

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.

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 Region experienced higher NonFood than Food inflation, the opposite was true for the other six regions.

Imported and Local Inflation

The 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.

The month-on-month inflation for imported goods was 0%, while the month-on-month inflation for local goods was 4.5%. The main contributor to local inflation was the inflation of locally produced foods.