Ghana’s inflation rises to 11.3% in May 2020

This means that between May 2019 and the same period in 2020, the prices of items have increased by 11.3%.

The may inflation rate is also 1.7 percentage points higher than the 10.6% recorded in April 2020.

The Government Statistician, Prof Samuel Kobina Annim, said the rise is mainly caused by the increase in food prices before and during the partial lock-down period which lasted for three weeks in April.

He however added that there has been a marginal decline in the contribution of food prices to the overall inflation figure.

“In terms of contribution to year on year inflation, we see food as the major contributor, contributing about 56 percentage points. In April 2020, we saw food inflation contributing close to 60%, so the contribution of food has slowed down in May 2020.”

“Although food continues to dominate in terms of its contribution, between April and May 2020, we see a slight drop. At the disaggregated level, we see food inflation recording a 15.1% rate of inflation relative to the 11.3% rate of inflation that we recorded for both food and non-food inflation,” Prof. Annim added.

On the regional breakdown for the inflation figures for May, he said the Greater Accra Region recorded the highest inflation of 13.3%, while the Upper East Region recorded the least inflation of 3.1%.

“At the aggregate level we see Greater Accra because of the contribution of non-food inflation having higher inflation relative to Ashanti and Western Regions,” he said.