Ghana’s producer price inflation has risen to 6.7 percent

According to the Ghana Statistical Service, the rise in inflation is due to the prevailing prices of commodities like gold and petroleum in the international world market.

In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, the Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Annim said that the cedi’s depreciation for the month of March also had an impact on the producer price inflation rate.

“There is a pattern in terms of the movement in the depreciation of the currency and also the PPI for mining and quarrying subsectors. But it is too early to jump the gun to say that these are causing the change of 3 per cent. There is the need for some level of estimation in determining the factors that have accounted for the rise in relation to the PPI,” he explained.

The Producer Price Index measures the average change over time in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services.

This is the third time that the Producer Price Inflation has increased between October 2018 and March 2019.

The three periods were July 2018 [8.2 per cent], October 2018 [7.2 per cent] and February 2019.

A breakdown of the performances for the subsectors shows that the mining and quarrying subsector recorded the highest inflation rate of 15.9 per cent.

It was followed by manufacturing at 6.1 per cent.

The utility subsector recorded the least inflation of 0.9 per cent.